Posted By ANH-USA On June 29, 2010 @ 10:41 am


Thanks to your activism, the provision to expand the Federal Trade Commission’s powers—and with it, the likely restricted access to nutritional supplements—did not make it into the final Wall Street “Reform” bill.


Congressman Henry Waxman (D–CA), with the support of powerful Congressman Barney Frank (D–MA), made a strong last-ditch effort to save the provision we’ve fought so hard against. The conference committee deliberations went on until early Friday morning, but in the end, the provision was not accepted and will therefore not be in the reconciled bill that will be submitted for final House and Senate passage and presidential signature.


Rep. Waxman is well known as an opponent of the dietary supplement industry. ANH–USA has been on alert to see how Waxman would use his committee chairmanship to strike at the DSHEA. He is very clever, and we knew a covert attack was a possibility. Last April we learned that Rep. Waxman had indeed gone covert.


He wrote FTC expansion language that was virtually indecipherable to any but a trained legislative expert, and hid it in a bill that was added to the vast House financial “reform” bill. This was done so covertly that even some health freedom activists did not believe that Waxman was the author of the provision, even though his own staff admitted it to us on two different occasions.


As soon as we became aware of thiswe immediately took action ^[1]. We forcefully spoke out and lobbied. We joined with over fifty other organizations opposing the provision. You responded to our appeal and made your voice heard in Congress.


This was crucial. Many of the organizations opposing this provision did not represent consumers. You told Congress that consumers and voters cared. After the decision went to a joint House–Senate committee, we contacted those of you who were in the particular states and districts represented, so that your message was carefully targeted.


Last Tuesday, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R–AL), ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, offered an amendment to the Conference Committee excluding the FTC expansion powers from the Wall Street Financial “Reform” final package. Rep. Waxman responded by strongly urging House conferees to leave the provision in, saying it did little more than put the FTC regulatory and enforcement authority on par with other oversight agencies included in the financial reform bill, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission or the proposed new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Note that Waxman could have limited the expanded powers to finance, but he did not. As we have explained in earlier articles, there is every reason to think that he was really aiming at supplements.


Waxman also told the conferees, “This is not a radical [grant of] new authorities.” Note again that this is technically true. These powers are not new. The FTC had them in the past and lost them because of abuses. But Waxman’s statement was misleading and therefore false—this was a radical expansion of FTC power. The conferees then rejected Rep. Bachus’s amendment by voice vote, which implied that the Waxman provision might yet pass.


Last Thursday, knowing that the deliberations were coming to a close, we again asked ANH–USA members who had senators or representatives on the conference committee to contact them directly. And in the early morning hours of Friday, the provision was defeated—proof that you are the deciding factor in the battle for natural health and health freedom!


We need to stay vigilant, however. FTC expansion efforts by Waxman are not necessarily over. Our allies on Capitol Hill believe he may slip the language into a miscellaneous amendment on some other bill. We have to be especially concerned about the lame duck session that will follow the fall election when defeated representatives have one last chance to vote. But now we know Waxman’s game plan, who his allies are in the Senate, and we will update you on any new developments.


Article printed from Alliance for Natural Health – US: http://www.anh-usa.org

URL to article: http://www.anh-usa.org/victory-the-anti-supplement-ftc-expansion-provision-is-defeated%e2%80%94at-least-for-now/

Source:The Alliance for Natural Health

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to abolish Structure/Function Claims and Qualified Health Claims. What does this jargon mean? Why is this so important?

At the present time, the FDA does not allow the seller of a food or supplement to say that the product will help prevent or treat a health condition or disease. Only a drug company selling an FDA approved drug may make such a claim. Any violation of this rule can result in massive fines and a long jail sentence.

The producer of a Vitamin D supplement cannot legally cite the science showing that Vitamin D prevents and treats the flu. Flu is considered a disease so this is forbidden. The science doesn’t matter to the FDA. Nor does freedom of speech.

The supplement producer can make a Structure/Function Claim. For example, the bottle might say to take Vitamin D for immune system function.

Alternatively, the Vitamin D producer might ask the FDA for permission to make a Qualified Health Claim. For example, it might ask to be able to say that Vitamin D may prevent or treat the flu (note the qualifying term “may”).

But the FDA does not like Qualified Health Claims and will almost always deny them. It will typically say the science is not strong enough. To reach this conclusion, it will throw out most scientific studies because they have not been set up in the form of standard FDA drug trials.

FDA Wants to Regulate Supplements Like Drugs

The FDA seems to want, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest says it wants, the abolition of both Structure/Function Claims and Qualified Health Claims. They seem to want food, supplements, and drugs to be treated exactly alike. No health claims of any sort would be allowed unless the product was brought through the full FDA approval process.

At first glance, this might seem both fair and logical. Why not treat everything alike? Why not subject food, supplements, and drugs to the same standard?

But this is not at all fair or logical. It is actually both unfair and completely illogical. It omits an all important fact: the staggering cost of FDA approval: up to $1 billion for a single product.

FDA Approval & Drug Patents Create Drug Monopolies

Drug companies can afford to pay these horrendous sums. For one thing, they can charge as much as $100 a pill. And how can they get away with charging so much? Because drugs are usually patented.

The patent together with FDA approval creates a monopoly. This is a government sanctioned and enforced monopoly, and it makes drug companies the most profitable businesses in America.

Another important fact: natural substances cannot usually be patented. At least the rules say that they cannot be. Does this mean that drug companies avoid natural substances? Of course not.

When drug companies find a natural substance that promises to prevent or treat disease, they seek to “twist” the molecules enough to claim that the resulting product is “new” and therefore patentable. Then they take the modified and no longer “natural” product to the FDA for approval.

The result? We now pay as much as 100X as much for the drug than we would have paid for the natural product. Worse, the “new” drug may be much more dangerous than the natural product from which it was derived.

Why is a Drug More Likely to be Dangerous?

Drugs are more likely to be dangerous than herbs or nutritional supplements because humans have had thousands of years to co-evolve with natural substances. Natural substances may of course be toxic for us. But the odds of any newly engineered substance being toxic, sometimes very toxic, are higher, because our bodies are completely unadapted to it.

If the Center for Science in the Public Interest is successful in abolishing Structure/Function Health Claims and Qualified Health Claims, it will not mean that foods and supplements will then be taken through the FDA approval process. This is inconceivable. It would cost way too much to do without patent protection.

Even if, hypothetically, foods and supplements were taken through the FDA approval process, nobody could afford to buy the approved products, which would now cost too much.

If Structure/Function and Qualified Health Claims disappeared, all that would happen is that Americans would have even less information than they do today about the potential health benefits of foods and supplements. Drugs would be the only game in town, no matter how expensive and how dangerous they might be.

The only way Americans would have to learn about the health benefits of eating the right foods and taking the right supplements would be to burrow into scientific journals. Much needless death and suffering would result. Our economy would continue to pay a higher and higher price for monopoly healthcare that does not improve our health.

Take action now!

Sign our letter and tell the FDA not to abolish the Structure/ Function and Qualified Health Claims systems, but rather expand them and stop censoring good science.

It is not a coincidence that certain vested interests, supported by groups like CSPI and the FDA, want to shut down any free flow of information about natural approaches to health. The new drug pipeline is getting thinner and both food and supplements are increasingly viewed by consumers as a much healthier alternative to drugs.

There is nothing less than a scientific revolution currently taking place at the intersection of food, food extracts, and food supplements. Solid, peer reviewed scientific research is pouring forth from reputable research institutions, especially research universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and the like.

Unfortunately the American people do not hear about this research. Food and supplement producers would like to tell them about it. But FDA rules prevent it.

This is the great “Catch 22” of modern American medicine. The greatest innovation and the most exciting news today is in natural medicine. But because natural substances aren’t patentable, they won’t get FDA approval. And because they won’t get FDA approval, the government won’t let us hear about it.

Don’t let the FDA tighten the noose on health information even further. Take action now to maintain your right to know. Reassert the constitutional right of all Americans to free and truthful speech about science.

Consider what is happening in Europe right now. Under emerging European rules, even a doctor will not be allowed to talk to a patient in private about food or supplements that have not been approved by it’s FDA equivalent health authority. At least the Europeans do not let the drug companies fund the health authority as we let the drug companies fund the FDA! (For more information about what is happening in Europe and internationally and how this relates to the CSPI proposal to the FDA, see ANH Feature: US health claims regime under Euro-threat.)

It is time to call a halt to this madness before European rules are adopted in the US. Good science should be freely available to all. Both food and supplement producers should be able to cite it without fear of jail. What can you do about this? Send a message directly to the FDA. Tell them to reject the CSPI proposal.

Please take action now.

Hunter Lewis
ANH-USA President

Waxman’s Anti-Supplement FTC Language Kept Out of The Senate Finance Reform Bill! Two weeks ago we told you about a “sneak” anti-supplement provision (Section 4901) slipped at the last moment into the House Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 4173). This “below the radar” provision would give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) broad new rulemaking and enforcement authority to force vitamins off the market or into drugs.

The good news is that with your support we successfully headed this off by making the provision too “controversial”, as Senator Dodd reportedly said. Still, the fight isn’t over. We must continue on the lookout for attempts by politicians in the pockets of “big pharma” to regulate vitamins out of the market.

Stay tuned. I will keep you posted to future developments.

A recent Pew Research Poll shows that nearly 80% of Americans don’t trust Washington and they have little faith that the massive federal bureaucracy can solve the nation’s ills. Here’s a good example.

“Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.” (To read the entire article posted in NaturalNews, click here.)

Your help is urgently needed to halt this power grab

Please take two minutes right now to sign two online petitions to tell your Senators to vote down this deceptive action by Henry Waxman — a lifelong opponent of natural medicine who is trying to covertly inject this expansion of FTC powers into the Finance Reform Bill.

According to the Natural Solutions Foundation, Senator Waxman’s amendment gives the FTC “power that could be used to restrict truthful information about dietary supplements, by requiring expensive, “drug company” level clinical trials before vitamin companies could make claims about their products.”

The Alliance for Natural Health says, “At the present time, the FTC takes the position that supplement companies should produce results from at least two random controlled human trials to show substantial support for any advertized health claim, even claims permitted by the FDA under DSHEA, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.”

This deceptive action is intended to put nutritional supplement companies out of business, make vitamin and herbal supplement drugs and give “big pharma” and its big money, the corner on the market.

Your help is urgently needed. I don’t send out a lot of “urgent call to action” requests, but this is one that definitely demands our collective attention. Please sign both of the online petitions below, or call, fax or email your representatives in Washington and strongly voice your opposition to any expansion of powers of the FTC over dietary supplements.

Click here to sign the Alliance for Natural Health online petition.

Click here to sign the Natural Solutions Foundations online petition.

Protect your health freedoms or you will lose them! The U.S. Congress is literally just one vote away from granting the FTC dangerous new powers to destroy the natural products industry. A vote could take place as early as this weekend.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered by Representative Paul Ryan-R (WI), on January 13, 2010, in Washington, D.C., at an event sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.

Health Care in a Free Society

SOMEONE once said that before there was the New Deal, there was the Wisconsin Deal. In my home state, the University of Wisconsin was an early hotbed of progressivism, whose goal was to reorder society along lines other than those of the Constitution. The best known Wisconsin progressive in American politics was Robert LaFollette. “Fighting Bob,” as he was called, was a Republican—as was Theodore Roosevelt, another early progressive. Today we tend to associate progressivism mostly with Democrats, and trace it back to Woodrow Wilson. But it had its roots in both parties.

The social and political programs of the progressives came in on two great waves: the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s. Today, President Obama often invokes progressivism and hopes to generate its third great wave of public policy. In thinking about what this would mean, we need look no farther than the health care reform program he is promoting along with the leadership in Congress.

Let me say here at the beginning that even though survey after survey shows that 75 percent or more of Americans are satisfied with the quality of their health care, no one I know in Congress denies that health care reform is needed. Everyone understands that health care in our country has grown needlessly expensive, and that some who want coverage cannot afford it. The ongoing debate over health care, then, is not about whether there should be reform; it is about what the principle of that reform ought to be.

Under the terms of our Constitution, every individual has a right to care for their health, just as they have a right to eat. These rights are integral to our natural right to life—and it is government’s chief purpose to secure our natural rights. But the right to care for one’s health does not imply that government must provide health care, any more than our right to eat, in order to live, requires government to own the farms and raise the crops.

Government’s constitutional obligations in regard to protecting such rights are normally met by establishing the conditions for free markets—markets which historically provide an abundance of goods and services, at an affordable cost, for the largest number. When free markets seem to be failing to meet this goal—and I would argue that the delivery of health care today is an example of where this is the case—government, rather than seeking to supply the need itself, should look to see if its own interventions are the root of the problem, and should make adjustments to unleash competition and choice.

With good reason, the Constitution left the administration of public health—like that of most public goods—decentralized. If there is any doubt that control of health care services should not have been placed in the federal government, we need only look at the history of Medicare and Medicaid—a history in which fraud has proliferated despite all efforts to stop it and failure to control costs has become a national nightmare.

In 1966 the cost of Medicare to the taxpayers was about $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that it would cost $12 billion (adjusted for inflation) by 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was nearly nine times that—$107 billion. By 2009 Medicare costs reached $427 billion, with Medicaid boosting that by an additional $255 billion. And this doesn’t take into account the Medicaid expansion in last year’s “stimulus.”

The health care reform bills that emerged from the House and the Senate late last year would only exacerbate this crisis. The federal takeover of health care that those bills represent would subsume approximately one-sixth of our national economy. Combined with spending at all levels, government would then control about 50 percent of total national production.

The good news is that we have a choice. There are three basic models for health care delivery that are available to us: (1) today’s business-government partnership or “crony capitalism” model, in which bureaucratized insurance companies monopolize the field in most states; (2) the progressive model promoted by the Obama administration and congressional leaders, in which federal bureaucrats tell us which services they will allow; and (3) the model consistent with our Constitution, in which health care providers compete in a free and transparent market, and in which individual consumers are in control.

We are urged today—out of compassion—to support the progressive model; but placing control of health care in the hands of government bureaucrats is not compassionate. Bureaucrats don’t make decisions about health care according to personal need or preference; they ration resources according to a dollar-driven social calculus.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the administration’s point people on health care, advocates what he calls a “whole life system”—a system in which government makes treatment decisions for individuals using a statistical formula based on average life expectancy and “social usefulness.” In keeping with this, the plans that recently emerged from Congress have a Medicare board of unelected specialists whose job it would be to determine the program’s treatment protocols as a method of limiting costs.

President Obama said in December: “If we don’t pass [this health care reform legislation]…the federal government will go bankrupt, because Medicare and Medicaid are on a trajectory that are [sic] unsustainable….” On first hearing, this argument appears ludicrous: We must stop the nation from going broke by enacting a program costing $800 billion or more in its first decade alone? On the other hand, if the President means what he says, there is only one way to achieve his stated goal under the new program: through deep and comprehensive government rationing of health care.

The idea that the government should make decisions about how long people should live and who should be denied care is something that Americans find repugnant. As is true of the supply of every service or product, the supply of health care is finite. But it is a mistake to conclude that government should ration it, rather than allowing individuals to order their needs and allocate their resources among competing options. Those who are sick, special needs patients, and seniors are the ones who will be most at risk when the government involves itself in these difficult choices—as government must, once it takes upon itself management of American health care.

The very idea of government-run health care conflicts with the American idea of a free society and the constitutional principles underlying it—the principles of individual rights and free markets. And from a practical perspective it makes no sense, given that our current health care system is the best in the world—even drawing patients from other advanced countries that have suffered by adopting the government-run model.

But if one begins with the idea that health care reform to reduce costs should be guided by the principles of economic and political liberty, what would such reform look like? Four changes to the current system come immediately to mind.

One, we should equalize the tax treatment of people paying for health care by ending the current discrimination against those who don’t get health insurance from their jobs—in other words, everyone paying for health care should receive the same tax benefits.

Two, we need high-risk insurance pools in the states so that those with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage that is not prohibitively expensive, and so that costs in non-high-risk pools are stabilized. To see the value of this, consider a pool of 200 people in which six have pre-existing heart disease or cancer. Rates for everyone will be through the roof. But if the six are placed in a high-risk pool and ensured coverage at an affordable rate, the risk profile of the larger pool is stabilized and coverage for the remaining 194 people is driven down.

Three, we need to unlock existing health care monopolies by letting people purchase health insurance across state lines—just as they do car insurance and other goods and services. This is a simple and obvious way to reduce costs.

Four, we need to establish transparency in terms of costs and quality of health care. In Milwaukee, an MRI can cost between $400 and $4,000, and a bypass surgery between $4,700 and $100,000. Unless the consumer is able to compare prices and quality of services—and unless he has an incentive to base choices on that information, as he does in purchasing other goods and services—there is not really a free market. It would go a long way to solve our health care problems to recreate one.

These four measures would empower consumers and force providers—insurers, doctors, and hospitals—to compete against each other for business. This works in other sectors of our economy, and it will work with health care.

So why can’t we agree on them? The answer is that the current health care debate is not really about how we can most effectively bring down costs. It is a debate less about policy than about ideology. It is a debate over whether we should reform health care in a way compatible with our Constitution and our free society, or whether we should abandon our free market economic model for a full-fledged European-style social welfare state. This, I believe, is the true goal of those promoting government-run health care.

If we go down this path, creating entitlement after entitlement and promising benefits that can never be delivered, America will become like the European Union: a welfare state where most people pay few or no taxes while becoming dependent on government benefits; where tax reduction is impossible because more people have a stake in welfare than in producing wealth; where high unemployment is a way of life and the spirit of risk-taking is smothered by webs of regulation.

America today is not as far from this tipping point as we might think. While exact and precise measures cannot be made, there are estimates that in 2004, 20 percent of households in the U.S. were receiving about 75 percent of their income from the federal government, and that another 20 percent were receiving nearly 40 percent of their income from federal programs.

All in all, about 60 percent of U.S. households were receiving more government benefits and services, measured in dollars, than they were paying back in taxes. It has also been estimated that President Obama’s first budget alone raises this level of “net dependency” to 70 percent.

Looked at in this way, I see health care reform of the kind promoted by the Obama administration and congressional leaders as part of a crusade against the American idea. This is a dramatic charge, but the only alternative is that they are ignorant of the consequences of their proposed programs. The national health care exchange created by their legislation, together with its massive subsidies for middle-income earners, would represent the greatest expansion of the welfare state in our country in a generation—and possibly in history.

According to recent analysis, the plan would provide subsidies that average a little less than 20 percent of the income of people earning up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. In other words, as many as 110 million Americans could claim this new entitlement within a few years of its implementation. In addition to the immediate massive increase in dependency this would bring on, the structure of the subsidies—whereby they fade out as income rises—would impose a marginal tax penalty that would act as a disincentive to work, increasing dependency even more.

And before I conclude, allow me to clear up a misperception about insurance exchanges: it makes absolutely no difference whether we have 50 state exchanges rather than a federal exchange, as long as the federal government is where the subsidies for consumers will be located. In other words, despite what some seem to believe, both the House and the Senate versions of health care reform set up a system in which, if you are eligible and you want a break on your insurance premium, it is the federal government that will provide it while telling you what kind of insurance you have to buy. In this sense, the idea of state exchanges instead of a federal exchange is a distinction without a difference.

* * *

Americans take pride in self-government, which entails providing for their own well-being and the well-being of their families in a free society. In exchange for this, the promoters of government-run health care would make them passive subjects, dependent on handouts and far more concerned about security than liberty.

At the heart of the conflict over heath care reform, as I said at the beginning, are two incompatible understandings of America: one is based on the principles of progressivism, and would place more and more aspects of our lives under the administration of unelected “experts” in federal bureaucracies; the other sees America as a society of free individuals under a Constitution that severely limits what the federal government can rightfully do.

We have seen many times over the past 100 years that the American people tend to be resistant to the progressive view of how we should reform our system of government—and I believe we are seeing this again today. Americans retain the Founders’ view that a government that seeks to go beyond its high but limited constitutional role of securing equal rights and establishing free markets is not progressive at all in the literal sense of that word—rather it is reactionary. Such a government seeks to privilege some Americans at the expense of others—which is precisely what the American Revolution was fought to prevent.

Americans understand that the problems facing our health care system today, real as they are, can be addressed without nationalizing one-sixth of the American economy and moving us past the tipping point toward a European-style social welfare state. They know that we can solve these problems while at the same time remaining a free society and acting consistently with the principles that have made us the greatest and most prosperous nation on earth. It is our duty now as their representatives to come together and do so.

PAUL RYAN is in his sixth term as a member of Congress, representing Wisconsin’s First Congressional District. He is the ranking member of the House Budget Committee and a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee. A graduate of Miami University in Ohio, he and his wife Janna have three children and live in Janesville, Wisconsin.

What’s wrong with the 1,018 page Health Care Reform bill being rushed through congress? Almost no one has read it! No one has had time to discuss it! The President and his staff want to keep it that way because it will scare the living daylights out of you. Dr. Betsy McCaughey, a health policy expert and former Lt. Governor of New York State (In 2004), explains some scary details of the Health Care Reform bills. To Listen click here.

Here’s the truth. The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn’t be accountable to the public. This is a power grab to hide the truth that the $500 billion-plus cost savings will come from rationing care to medicare recipients. That means denying medical care to your 72+ year old mom and dad simply because the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research has determined that dementia is not a cost-effective use of funds.

According to Dr. McCaughey , “the health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They’d decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.”

“Yet at least two of President Obama’s top health advisers should never be trusted with that power,” she says.

“Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that’s what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they’ll tell you that a doctor’s job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ‘96).

Translation: Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years” (Lancet, Jan. 31).

Americans need to know what the president’s health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much. No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views.”

Dr. McCaughey has read the entire 1,018 pages of the House Health Care Reform bill. To read her overview of concerns quoted above or to find a pdf of the entire House and Senate versions of the bills, click here.

To hear Dr. McCaughey explain the scary details of President Obama’s Health Insurance Reform Plan to Senator Fred Thompson on his radio show, click here.

America’s health care is in a crisis of both cost and care. Most Americans are spending way too much for way too little, way too late. It’s a crisis because insurance premiums have soared beyond most of our means but, more importantly, it’s a crisis because the conventional medical system has focused on disease rather than health, extraordinarily expensive procedures late in the progression of disease rather than prevention and prescribe tests and treatments based on fear of liability and law suits rather than on the health and best interest of the individual.

The U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care than any other country in the world, yet ranks 21st in infant mortality, 17th in male life expectancy, and 16th in female life expectancy.

The health care bill in the United States is $2.5 trillion per year, or 15.2 percent of the U.S. economy. Of that $2.5 trillion dollars, approximately 80% goes to hospitals, drug companies and doctors, while 20% goes to cover administrative costs.

A review of our current health care dilemma published in Consumer Reports conservatively concluded that overuse of medical services wastes $300 billion a year, while administrative inefficiency adds about $170 billion. That’s a whopping $470 billion wasted annually.

A Rand Corporation study, using nationally recognized medical experts found that up to 35% of all hospital admissions are not needed, 15-30% of diagnostic tests don’t help or aren’t even looked at, 25% of hospital days could be done without, and 25% of all medical procedures are unnecessary.

There are 2.2 million Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) and 106,000 fatalities annually in the U.S. due to known side effects of prescription drugs and an additional 98,000 Americans that die every year from medication mistakes made by physicians, pharmacists and other health care professionals. That’s more than from breast cancer, highway accidents and AIDS combined according to the report from the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences.

“These stunningly high rates of medical errors, resulting in deaths, permanent disability and unnecessary suffering, are simply unacceptable in a medical system that promises first to ‘do no harm,’” said William C. Richardson, president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and chairman of the expert committee that compiled the findings.

Here’s the deeper problem: the conventional medical system is based entirely on the treatment of disease with drugs or surgery, both extraordinarily expensive. Each new drug produced costs the manufacturer an average of $500 million to get to the production line. Therefore, drug companies charge outrageous prices for their drugs. Hospital building costs and the cost of continual technological upgrades are a major cause of medical inflation, yet these expenses do not necessarily translate into better care or more successful treatments.

The conventional medical establishment has convinced the general population that we can’t take care of our own health, we need expensive technology and procedures to diagnose what’s wrong, that the cause of disease is outside of the realm of our control, and that the answer to every health problem is either a drug or surgery. Conventional medical doctors tend to scare patients into expensive and invasive procedures before they have a chance to think about it, get a second opinion, or seek an alternative.

However, there is a small but growing number of doctors who are in a response to public outcry, Congress appropriated $2 million for the creation of an Office of Alternative Medicine, under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the possibility of finding safer, more effective, and less costly ways of healing. Here are a few examples.

Cardiovascular Disease

Conventional Therapy:

Drugs, Coronary Bypass Surgery, Balloon Angioplasty, Carotid Artery Bypass.

Cost of Conventional Therapy:

More money is spent in America on Cardiovascular disease than any other illness — approximately $200 billion annually, nevertheless it is still the number one killer. Every year more than 500,000 coronary bypass surgeries are performed in the U.S. at an average cost of about $40,000. That’s a whopping $20 billion total. Another 1,244,000 patients undergo coronary angioplasty or get coronary stents. Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of illness and death in the U.S., with an estimated direct cost in the U.S. of $210 billion in 2003, including $94 billion in in-hospital costs alone.

In spite of the high price tag, a study from Brigham & Women’s Hospital, in Boston, found that 84% of the recommended bypass surgeries investigated was unnecessary and the risk of death from coronary bypass surgery averages 2.25%. That means that approximately 11,250 patients die every year because of the procedure. Additionally, up to 33% of all patients who undergo bypass surgery suffer some transient or permanent neurological damage or decrease in IQ. Fifty percent of bypassed arteries clog up again within 5 years, and 80% become blocked again within 7 years.

The Coronary Artery Surgery Study concluded that patients who received bypass surgery experienced no significant improvement in longevity or incidence of heart attacks over the group treated only with medication. In fact, in those patients with two blocked coronary arteries, yet good strong heart function, the bypass operation actually increased their death rate 7 years later.

Natural Therapy:

Diet; exercise; specific nutritional supplements. There is now conclusive proof from clinical trials, published in the Lancet, that clogged arteries can be opened and cardiovascular disease reversed by diet, exercise and life-style changes. Active lifestyle modification as described by Dr. Dean Ornish, M.D. costs about $7500 in the first year and nominally more thereafter.( Cowley G, Hager M, Springen K. Healer of hearts. Newsweek. 1998:50)

Currently, about 40 insurance companies cover Ornish’s lifestyle modification program, and Medicare is considering covering it.
The potential savings to the US economy of shifting the emphasis on Coronary Artery Disease treatment from invasive cardiology surgical procedures to lifestyle modification is substantial.

Cost of alternative therapy:

The cost of a proven nutritional therapy for hardening of the arteries is approximately $7500. That is 81.25% less than the cost of surgery. Here are the numbers: $3.75 million ($7500 X 500,000) vs. $20 billion ($40,000 X 500,000) for surgery.

Estimated savings:

Prevention is the key. According to the study by Brigham & Women’s Hospital, 84% of all Coronary Surgeries are unnecessary. Preventing this 84% of the current annual 500,000 bypass surgeries would save $16.8 billion annually (420,000 X $40,000). Nutritional reversal of cardiovascular disease is safer, more effective, and costs only 18.75% as much as the risky, less effective, surgical procedure.

High Blood Pressure

Conventional Therapy:

Diuretics, Sympathetic Nervous System Depressant Drugs, Vasodilator Drugs, Addition of a second Sympathetic Nervous System Depressant Drug.

Cost of Conventional Therapy:

73.6 million people in the U.S. have high blood pressure. Three fourths of that 60 million (73.6 million X 69% = 51 million) are on blood pressure lowering drugs. Blood pressure lowering drugs on average cost $600 per year per person. That’s $600 X 45 million people for a total cost of $30 billion spent every year to treat high blood pressure.

Not only is conventional treatment expensive, but it causes significant negative side-effects, including fatigue, listlessness, weakness, dry mouth, sedation, depression, impotence, high blood sugar, GI irritation, and insomnia.

What’s more, studies have shown that blood pressure lowering drugs do not extend longevity or reverse coronary heart disease. In fact in approximately one half of the studies, patients receiving these drugs had more nonfatal heart attacks and more fatal heart attacks than the patients who were not given the drugs.

Natural Therapy:

Diet consisting of no more than 20% fat, with no more than 6% saturated fat (as is found in meat and dairy products), 65-70% Carbohydrate and 10-15% Protein from whole grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes; Garlic Supplementation; Magnesium Supplementation; Tobacco, Caffeine, and Alcohol cessation; Exercise; and Stress Management.

Cost of Natural Therapy:

-$1076 (Net savings of $1076 per person annually.) The cost of the Garlic and Magnesium Supplementation is approximately $384 per year. However, the savings of this mostly vegetarian diet is at least $2 per day and $730 per year compared to the cost of the Standard American Diet. The savings of quitting cigarettes, caffeine, and alcohol is at least $2 per day, and $730 per year. Therefore, the gross savings is $1460 per person annually ($730 + $730 = $1460). This $1460 in savings minus $384 in costs, gives a net savings of $1076.

Estimated savings:

Total savings: $75.42 billion: $30 billion from not using drugs plus $54.9 billion additional savings from the diet and life-style changes ($1076 X 51 million = $54.9 billion).

Child birth

Conventional Therapy:

4.26 million babies are born in the U.S. every year. A new ten year study conducted by a team of doctors from Canada’s McMasters University and Oxford University in England reports that much of what doctors and hospitals do for pregnancy and birth is wrong, expensive and dangerous. Dr. Marc Keirse concluded, “Having a doctor involved in all pregnancies can be a bad thing. You get more technology, more hospital infections, more unhappy mothers and more cost.”

“It comes down to whether you consider pregnancy and birth pathological (disease) or physiological (normal) events,” says Dr. Keirse. “As soon as a doctor shows his face, everything turns toward disease. It’s hard to accept that having obstetricians at all deliveries is a bad thing. Yet, if you have well-trained midwives, very few deliveries need a specialist present. In the Netherlands, 30% of all women deliver safely at home.”

The Cesarean-section rate in the United States is another example of overuse and unnecessary medicine. It is among the highest in the world. It jumped from 5.5% of all births in 1970 to 24.4% in 1987 to 33% in 2007. The major reason for the increase appears to be the decreased respect for the nature and the natural process of life, the increased use of technology, including internal fetal monitoring, and the schedule of the doctor.

Cost of Conventional Therapy:

$8800 for an uncomplicated delivery X 2.8 million deliveries = $24.6 billion; $11,500 for a C-Section X 1.4 million deliveries annually = $16.1 billion;

Natural Therapy:

The Public Citizen, a health research organization, headed by Sydney Wolfe, M.D., estimates that at least half of the more than 1 million C-sections performed in this country annually are unnecessary, subjecting mothers to a fourfold increased risk of death during childbirth.

Dr. Wolfe says that the high C-section rate in the U.S. is driven by a fear of malpractice law suits, the convenience of doctors, the higher fee involved, the use of drugs and procedures that slow down or impede the natural labor and delivery process, and the outdated notion that it is unsafe for a woman who has had one C-section to have a vaginal delivery for subsequent children. Midwives have fewer complications because they generally spend more time with their patients teaching them proper nutrition during pregnancy. They allow their patients to walk, stand, or squat during labor using gravity to help nature along. Homeopathic remedies tested in double blind clinical trials in France are used to decrease the length of labor and delivery and reduce the number of complications.

Cost of Natural Therapy:

Natural Childbirth is normal vaginal delivery without the use of an anesthetic spinal tap. Moms who have had uncomplicated pregnancies may choose to let labor begin on its own, eliminating the need for a sometimes costly induction that may be difficult for both mom and baby. Some moms even choose not to use pain medications during their labors, using breathing techniques, visualization, and music to cope with the pain of labor. With no anesthesia, the associated costs of the IV or epidural catheter insertion and the anesthesiologist’s own charges are eliminated. Also, the newborn may be more alert after an unmedicated or natural birth, making the need for resuscitation and specialized newborn care less likely.

Estimated savings:

$1000 X $2.8 million uncomplicated deliveries = $2.8 billion saved; Eliminating half of the 1.4 million C-sections performed annually in the U.S. that are considered unnecessary and delivering those babies by conventional vaginal delivery would save $2,700 X 700,000 deliveries = $1.9 billion dollars saved annually.

Uterine Fibroids

Conventional Therapy:

One out of every three American women will have her uterus removed by the time she is 60 years old. Currently there are 600,000 hysterectomies performed in this country every year.

Few would argue against a hysterectomy in cases where the uterus is the site of a life threatening cancer. However, only 10% of all hysterectomies in the U.S. are performed for this reason. Hysterectomies are most commonly prescribed for benign uterine fibroids and heavy menstrual bleeding that affects millions of American women.

Cost of Conventional Therapy:

$5145 X 540,000 (number of hysterectomies for non cancers) = 2.8 billion.

Natural Therapy:

There is a natural treatment for uterine fibroids using nutrition, certain herbs and natural, bio-identical hormone therapy.

Cost of Natural therapy:

$1000 X 540,000 = $540 million.

Estimated savings:

$2.3 billion annually.

Prostate Enlargement

Conventional Therapy:

Surgery; Drugs: Finasteride, Terazosin

Cost of Conventional Therapy:

$4 billion: $2 billion for surgery ($5000 X 400,000 men); $2 billion for drug therapy ($1020 per person per year X 2 million men)

Natural Therapy:

Oral capsules of an extract from the plant Serenoa repens (Saw palmetto) have been shown in double-blind clinical trials to be more effective than the drug Finasteride (Proscar) and to have fewer side effects. This herb is commonly used in Europe for this condition.

Cost of Natural Therapy:

$300 annually X 2.4 million men per year = $720 million annually.

Estimated savings:

Total savings: $ 3.28 billion

Peptic Ulcers

Conventional Therapy:

Drugs: Tagamet, Zantac, Pepcid, Prilosec, Carafate.

Cost of Conventional Therapy:

$2 billion annually.

Natural Therapy:

Extract of the plant Licorice root (deglycyrrhizinated licorice, or DGL, a special type of Licorice which prevents Potassium loss). Studies have shown that DGL is more effective than Tagamet or Zantac in healing peptic ulcers and preventing recurrences, with fewer side effects.

Cost of Natural Therapy:

Approximately one-third that of conventional drug therapy.

Estimated Savings:

$1.33 billion annually.

PREVENTION I s T h e S o l u t i o n

The current health care system is not a health care system at all, it is a disease care system. It spends very little time promoting health because it’s not profitable. It spends most of its time treating disease. It ignores the major precipitating causes of all the chronic diseases–poor diet and life-style choices–allowing their progression over a period of years or decades, prescribing drugs to treat the symptoms, until a crisis to occurs, when doctors can then declare a state of emergency and intervene with extraordinarily expensive and invasive procedures.

Too much time and money is being spent at the wrong end of the spectrum. Waiting until a patient has a heart attack to treat their heart disease is like waiting until the engine in your car burns up before you realize it’s out of oil. All you need to prevent thousands of dollars of engine repair is a twenty dollar oil change every 3000 miles.

Heart disease, cancer, and stroke, in that order, are the three leading causes of death in this country. Diabetes ranks number seven. These are chronic degenerative diseases that develop slowly over a period of years and they are for the most part preventable. Taken together, the treatment of all chronic diseases accounts for 85% of the total national health care bill, a whopping $574 billion dollars.

Preventable Chronic Disease

Disease             % Preventable

Heart Disease            54

Cancer                37

Cerebrovascular            50

Hardening of the Arteries        49

Diabetes                26

Average    %    43

Source: CDC, Public Health Service, 1975

The major cause of our current health care crisis is due to the fact that most doctors, 99% of them, are simply not trained in prevention or nutrition, in fact they are taught that nutrition doesn’t matter. Most doctors have a strong negative bias against nutrition. Quite simply it is a threat to their income. If diet is the cause of disease, then diet is the cure.

Conventional Medicine simply does not want to admit that it is wrong: that diet does matter. Such an admission would take away a doctor’s prestige and a patient’s need for sophisticated technology, expensive drugs and surgical procedures. It would mean that patients could take charge of their own health by changing their diet. The fact is diet does matter. A poor diet causes heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, gall stones, arthritis, and more, and a good diet can prevent them and cure them. The most important aspect of the health care equation, which is being overlooked, is PREVENTION!

The secret to solving the health care crisis lies in the fulfillment of Thomas Edison’s vision of the doctor of the future. It is the only way we will be able to significantly reduce the mammoth health care costs and improve our health at the same time. The problem with the currently dominant medical system is the system itself. Disease care is expensive. True health care, which by definition implies wellness and prevention, is far healthier for the economy and our total well being.

Dr. Hansen’s Prescription

My prescription to solve the health care crisis includes two key elements: knowledge and responsibility. Doctors must become more knowledgeable in nutrition and patients must become more responsible for managing their own heath care.

Even though volumes of scientific evidence now clearly show that diet and nutrition play a key role in the major health problems in the U.S., more than 70% of the graduates of conventional, allopathic, medical schools in the U.S. receive absolutely no required training in clinical nutrition.

Naturopathic medical schools, on the other hand, have led the way in clinical nutritional education for more than a century. Today’s naturopathic physicians receive more than 200 required classroom hours in clinical nutrition and another 1200 hours in clinical medical practice during the course of their training. In allopathic medical schools only 21 hours, on average, are given to only a few nutritional topics such as Iron Deficiency Anemia and requirements for Potassium replacement due to diuretic drug therapy.

Patients deserve to be taught by their doctors since the word “doctor” means teacher. However, patients also need to become more self-reliant. They need to take advantage of the age of information that we live in. The knowledge is available and growing every year.

Don’t wait for Nationalized Health Care. It will only be less of the same. I recommend buying a catastrophic medical policy to insure yourself and your family against a major illness such as a serious accident, personal injury, or some unusual unpreventable illness that would require reconstructive surgery, intensive care, or, heaven forbid, a prolonged hospital stay.

Learn to prevent heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, gall stones, arthritis, cataracts, and glaucoma. Learn to treat allergies, asthma, bumps, bruises, coughs, colds, fevers, infections, etc. at home. You can take charge of your own health. The body is the real healer; not doctors and not drugs. Vibrant health, a sharp mind and boundless energy are your birth right. Its yours for the taking.

The White House is scrambling to pass Health Care Reform Bills within the next few weeks because it doesn’t want the American public to have time to actually examine the contents or the costs. What’s Wrong With the Proposed Health Care Reform?

1)  IT WILL COST TOO MUCH AND COVER TOO FEW
The projected cost of the Health Care Bill is more than $1 trillion dollars. That’s 1 THOUSAND BILLION DOLLARS or 1 MILLION MILLION DOLLARS. And you know that if they tell you it will cost $1 trillion dollars, it will end up costing $2 trillion dollars. The proposed Health Care Costs will only cover 15 million of the 43 million uninsured Americans.

The truth is that almost 50% (20 million) of the uninsured have enough money to get health insurance, but are young and single and choose not to buy health insurance. Another 30% (12 million are not Americans at all, but illegal aliens. That leaves only 20 million Americans 6.5% of the total population) that are truly without health insurance. These uninsured already receive free health care: $100 billion from Acess, Medicaid, etc, and $70 billion from hospitals and doctors who treat these patients for free.

2)  WE WILL ALL END UP PAYING FOR IT
We already pay for the uninsured by higher insurance premiums charged to cover the extra costs associated wtih providing for the the uninsured that routinely use the emergency rooms for care.

Who’s going to pay the new plans? Senator Kennedy’s proposal, which he calls the Affordable Health Choices Act, proposes charging individuals up to 10% or more of their adjusted gross income for insurance coverage.

The House bill would mandate that all Americans and Employers obtain health insurance or pay a fine. Additionally, the House bill would tax individuals with adjusted gross incomes of $280,000 or more ($350,000 for couples) to raise money to pay for it. This number could easily be lowered dramatically as the health care reform costs increase over time. In the end, we will all pay for it because business owners will have to charge more for their goods and services to compensate for their added expense of paying for government run health care for their employees.

3)  PRIVATE INSURANCE WILL NO LONGER BE AN OPTION
According to a report in the Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill contains a provision that makes individual private medical insurance illegal.
(Source: Editorial, “It’s Not An Option,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 15, 2009)

4)    NATIONALIZED HEALTH CARE IS BAD HEALTH CARE
The bigger the bureaucracy and the farther away from the doctor the treatment decision is made, the worse it is for the patient. Nationalized Health Care will mean you will likely never see the same doctor twice and you will wait longer in crowded medical clinics but have less time to spend with the doctor, or more likely the nurse practitioner.

Nationalized medicine will restrict your ability to see a specialist and will limit which tests and treatments your doctor will be allowed to prescribe. The bottom line is this: Nationalized Health Care is a government take-over of the U.S. Insurance industry and the Medical System, which will give politicians too much power, too much money, and too much responsibility that they should not have or can honestly and effectively manage.

5)  MANAGED HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED HEALTH CARE
Nationalized health care is managed health care. President Obama has proposed a national database to determine the most cost-effective treatments in health care. Although this sounds like a good idea, it inevitably means that eventually bureaucrats, not doctors, will decide who gets what treatments and who doesn’t. What is “Prevention” and what is wasteful spending. Those over age 76 will likely not get life saving treatments or will be put on waiting lists for hip replacements, etc, behind younger patients.

6)  IT WILL INCREASE ABORTIONS AT TAX PAYER EXPENSE
If either one of the two main healthcare reform bills are passed, it will mean more abortions at the taxpayers’ expense. The two primary bills - the Kennedy bill and the House Democratic leadership bill -both contain multiple provisions that would result in federally mandated insurance coverage of abortions on demand, which would result in massive federal subsidies for abortion and even the mandated creation of many new abortion clinics across the country. Its all part of President Obama’s Abortion Agenda…Continue…

7)  IT WON’T FIX THE REAL PROBLEM WITH HEALTH CARE
The real problem with today’s health care is that it treats symptoms rather than the cause of disease. Our current medical system is based entirely on the treatment of disease with drugs or surgery, which are both extraordinarily expensive. Chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes account for 75 percent of all health care spending in America today.  However, these diseases are mostly preventable by nutrition and lifestyle changes and that’s why it is vitally important that we focus reform efforts on prevention rather than rationing the current system of symptomatic treatment and crisis intervention of late stage disease.

To read Dr. Hansen’s Solution to the Health Care Crisis, in Click Here

Don’t just take my word, click on this link to hear Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyle, of Arizona explain some healthy options that we could implement without a government take-over or higher taxes.

To make your voice heard on capitol hill send a message to the White House and congressional leaders today! Please join me in sending a petition to Washington. Click here to read the petition.