Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Nurses, Doctors Announce 'Scrubs for SiCKO' Campaign in Conjunction With Debut of Michael Moore's Film to Spark Genuine healthcare Debate
Planning to spark a fundamental change in national healthcare politics, an unprecedented national coalition of nurses and doctors organizations today announced plans to rally around the openings of Michael Moore's "SiCKO" June 29 to press the campaign for single-payer healthcare, guaranteeing comprehensive, quality healthcare with an expanded and improved Medicare for all. |
Jacky Law
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 Viren Mehta, managing partner of Mehta Partners, a global healthcare consultancy, points out that as Medicare prepared to pick up the bill for all US pensioners, policies were being written to remove slack from the system. If passed, they would mean patients paying for more drugs themselves, and the widespread practice of doctors prescribing a drug off-label, which means for a condition for which it has not been officially approved, would be cut down.31 Both would have the effect of cutting the volume of drugs prescribed. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 There is a Gestapo-like effort out there to try to shut down anything that tries to compete with the overpriced, ineffective U.S. healthcare system. And as medical tourism becomes more popular, I think we're going to see the American Medical Association, hospital associations and maybe even the FDA up in arms, complaining about the loss of revenue to U.S. companies. Because, let's face it: big medicine is big business. And organize medicine absolutely hates competition.
I say you can't stop the free market. |
| They see the opportunity and they see the U.S. healthcare system stumbling. Meanwhile, Americans are getting more diseased than ever before, so there's an instant customer base for hospitals around the world who can offer quality care at a better price.
The U.S., for its part, tends to be rather protectionist about all of this. We've seen, for example, the FDA seizing the importation of perfectly legal prescription drugs because it doesn't want drugs to come into this country. It wants to protect the U.S. |
| So in addition to exporting so many jobs from the IT industry, we will actually be exporting healthcare revenues to countries around the world. And these are substantial revenues; we're talking about billions of dollars at stake. In fact, many of these Asian countries are counting on this revenue as an increasingly important part of their Gross Domestic Product. Some of these countries are saying tourism is big and medical tourism is going to be big. And they're putting a lot of money into building state-of-the-art infrastructure and engaging in marketing to attract more medical tourists. |
| That's the story on medical tourism, and it's yet another demonstration of the deterioration of the U.S. healthcare system and the failure of organized medicine. |
Jacky Law
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| Peter Rixon, editor of UK-based The healthcare Lobbyist, describes how Washington's revolving-door between public and private life is able to facilitate careers in advocacy that Europeans can only dream about.14
A successful career as an advocate for a cause involves a person spending a couple of years in government before moving back into the mainstream, either alone or with a company in the private sector. |
| Public-private programmes thrive in healthcare. Consider, for example, President George W. Bush's controversial plans to screen the US population for mental health, starting with those still at school. These plans were announced in July 2004 and are gradually being implemented across the nation. Based on the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, the idea is nothing less than a wholesale transformation of current services that, among other things, wants Americans to appreciate the importance of good mental health as much as they do good physical health. |
| When money gets scarce
Meanwhile, governments around the world were getting distinctly jittery because there seemed to be no limit to the demand for healthcare. In 1960, the UK NHS spent around US$84 per person per year on health, which can be expressed as 3.9% of the UK's wealth or gross domestic product (GDP). In 1980, that figure was $977 (5.6% of GDP), and by 2002, it had shot up to $2,160 (7.7%). Similar leaps are seen throughout the world. In the US, for example, the equivalent spending in 1960 was $114 per person (5% of GDP), $2,738 (8.7%) in 1980 and $5,267 (14.6%) in 2002. |
| The authority of healthcare systems around the world cannot help but crumble in the face of much more confident and articulate customers. Unlike education, good health is not yet compulsory and people who choose to attach themselves to philosophies that lie outside the remit of conventional medicine are growing in number. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| In the U.S. healthcare system, it's a paperwork nightmare. And there is a paperwork war taking place. All of this is a result of health insurance, both taxpayer-funded health insurance and private health insurance. In other words, things would be a lot simpler if people just price-shopped some of these procedures and paid out of their own pocket, rather than having to go through a monstrous bureaucratic system of paper shufflers.
As a medical tourist in another country, you eliminate these paperwork shufflers. And right there, you can save as much as 80% right off the bat. |
Peter Rost
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 I would transform myself from one of the internal poster boys of a hard-charging healthcare hitman and loyal manager to someone who would show the world the dirty deeds of the industry I had worked for, for so long.
Reconnaissance
Pharmacia had hired their private detective, so I felt no hesitation when I started my own covert investigation. What I wanted to find out next was what Darren McAllister would say about me to future employers. As my direct supervisor, his support was crucial to get another job. |
| Based on that complaint, in 2003 AstraZeneca pleaded guilty to healthcare crimes and agreed to pay $355 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities in connection with its drug pricing and marketing practices with regard to Zoladex, a drug sold for the treatment of prostate cancer. Of this amount, $266 million was recovered under the False Claims Act, and the remainder was levied as criminal fines. |
Jacky Law
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| The NHS, like any healthcare system, works because there is some basis of trust that patients will do what doctors consider to be in their best interests. When that trust breaks down, for whatever reason, governments find they are not only paying mounting costs for drugs, but they are spending more than they should in other ways. A paper in the Pharmaceutical Journal, for example, says about half of all medicines prescribed in the UK are not taken.32 If you believe the UK pharma industry association, the ABPI, the figure is much higher, at around 80%. |
Peter Rost
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| I told the cameras that "the most important healthcare issue today is reimportation. We have 67 million Americans without insurance for drugs. They pay cash, full price. And many of them don't get the drugs they need, because they cannot afford our high prices."
Then I went straight for the jugular of those who oppose drug importation. "The biggest argument against reimportation is safety. What everyone has conveniently forgotten to tell you is that in Europe, reimportation of drugs has been in place for twenty years."
This was my key message. |
| I added, "But let me comfort you: We did beat them all in one area! Our healthcare costs are twice as high as theirs. And our costs for individual drugs are sometimes twice as high, even ten times as high. The difference, between them and us, is that they all have affordable drugs."
It was time to lighten the somber mood that started to settle over the room: "Are we fools, unable to stop this madness? Abraham Lincoln said 'You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of them all the time.' And Abraham Lincoln hadn't even read the February 2004 issue of Pharmaceutical Executive. |
| In his book, Hank McKinnell wrote, "My motivation for writing this book isn't celebrity or fortune; all royalties are being donated to the Academic Alliance for healthcare in Africa." It is hard to say what royalties the book was generating, but when I first viewed it, the book's Amazon.com sales rank was around 20,000—not terrible, but certainly not a bestseller. So it was with great satisfaction that I observed how, shortly after I had distributed my press release, the book jumped into the low thousands in ranking and stayed there for a month. |
Bill Sardi
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 Source: American Cancer Society
'i
The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide, issues systematic reviews of healthcare interventions. The Cochrane Collaboration reviewed published studies involving mammography and determined that the absolute risk reduction for breast cancer achieved by mammography is 0.05% (l/20th of 1%), and that 0.05% of women undergoing mammography are mistakenly diagnosed. |
Peter Rost
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| Tendentious and boring as I expected this book would be, I soon realized that, in fact, it was filled with so many amazing statements that I decided not just to do a review on Amazon, but to also distribute the review through a press release distributed to all news media and on the net.
MEA CULPA BY A BIG PHARMA CEO, July 5, 2005
Pfizer's CEO, Dr. Hank McKinnell has written an astonishing book in which he admits that he doesn't always believe in what he's saying [11], that drugs from Canadian pharmacies are safe [69] and that high U.S. |
Greg Critser
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 It then went on:
Can healthcare communication influence healthcare outcomes? Does branding enhance the placebo effect? Our take on it? We believe image and information, imagination and belief, play a huge role in the healing process. Feeding their minds can fuel positive change in both physicians and patients. Within the healthcare marketing arena, you'll find thousands of people sincerely motivated by the desire to improve health and save lives. Communicators committed to delivering messages that are truly part of the medicine. |
Bill Sardi
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| Source: American Cancer Society
'i
The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide, issues systematic reviews of healthcare interventions. The Cochrane Collaboration reviewed published studies involving mammography and determined that the absolute risk reduction for breast cancer achieved by mammography is 0.05% (l/20th of 1%), and that 0.05% of women undergoing mammography are mistakenly diagnosed. |
C. W. Randolph, M.D.
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 The first was to create a vehicle to educate both the medical community and healthcare consumers about the safety and efficacy of bio-identical hormone therapies. Our second goal was to make my over-the-counter bio-identical progesterone cream and other products more widely available, committing a percentage of website profits to support medical research in the field of bio-identical hormone replacement.
To date, I have been overwhelmed by the positive response of many of my physician peers, as well as interested and
201 educated healthcare consumers. |
Michael T. Murray and Michael R. Lyon
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 Our healthcare system is already strained by this epidemic, and the ability to sustain even basic healthcare in the years to come is in doubt if obesity continues to prevail as it does today. We all need to do our part in helping to reverse this worrisome trend. The best place to start is in our own homes and our own lives. Helping to face weight problems head-on and giving the tools to solve them is what this book is all about.
OBESITY DEFINED
The simplest definition of obesity is an excessive amount of body fat. |
| North America has the highest percentage of people who are obese, as well as the highest number of people who are succumbing to obesity-related illnesses. Our healthcare system is already strained by this epidemic, and the ability to sustain even basic healthcare in the years to come is in doubt if obesity continues to prevail as it does today. We all need to do our part in helping to reverse this worrisome trend. The best place to start is in our own homes and our own lives. Helping to face weight problems head-on and giving the tools to solve them is what this book is all about. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| When you combine these two savings - the paperwork shuffling reduction and the medical malpractice lawsuits - and you get an incredible deal for your dollar.
Some people might ask, "What if something goes wrong during the surgery?" Well, here you have the reputation of the hospital and the surgeon at stake. They know that they must offer you outstanding, high-quality service. Otherwise, word will spread via the internet and elsewhere, and tourists won't come visit their hospital. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Hypoglycemia: The Classic healthcare Handbook. New York: Kensington Publishing, 2002.
Schwarzbein, Diana. The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth about Losing Weight, Being Healthy, and
Feeling Younger. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1999. Shimer, Porter. New Hope for People with Diabetes. Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing 2001. Shiri, R., J. Koskimaki, M. Hakama, J. Hakkinen, T. L. Tammela, H. Huhtala, and A. Auvinen. "Effect of Chronic Diseases on Incidence of Erectile Dysfunction." Urology 62, no. 6 (2003): 1097-1102. Superiorpics.com Entertainment News, May 28, 2006. http://news. |
| Sugar and Cardiovascular Disease: A Statement for healthcare Professionals from the Committee on Nutrition of the Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism of the American Heart Association." Circulation 106 (2002): 523-27.
James, Janet, Peter Thomas, David Cavan, and David Kerr. "Preventing Childhood Obesity by Reducing Consumption of Carbonated Drinks: Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial." British Medical Journal 328 (2004): 1237-41.
Jeppesen, Jorgen, Hans Ole Hein, Poul Suadicani, and Finn Gyntelberg. |
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