Bottom Line Health
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| Seeing Red: Americans Driven into Debt by medical bills. The Commonwealth Fund.
"Rising Health Costs, Medical Debt and Chronic Conditions." Center for Studying Health System Change.
Health Affairs.
Millions of American families are struggling to pay their medical bills, while others are drowning in the debt accrued by doctor and hospital visits, according to recent studies. What's troubling is that a significant percentage of these people have health insurance.
As the cost of medical care continues to rise, consumers are bearing a greater share of their medical expenses. |
| Doty, a senior analyst at The Commonwealth Fund and author of a study examining insurance trends, and her colleagues report that almost two out of five adults in the US—an estimated 77 million people—have difficulty paying medical bills or are struggling with medical debt. Surprisingly, 70% of the people who are overwhelmed by medical debt and 57% of those who have current bill-paying problems said they were insured at the time their difficulties began, the study found. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 Mills worried that many citizens would be disappointed in the program—and angry at the party that gave it to them— once they discovered how little it really covered, a possibility the AMA and several Republicans were already exploiting by telling the public that Medicare would reimburse only a tiny fraction of their medical bills. In reality, it covered more than a tiny fraction—80 percent of sixty-five days a year in the hospital—but still, less than the public thought. It did not cover physician fees at all. |
| For this low-tech but intensive service, the company charges insurers an average of six thousand to eight thousand dollars per patient—but it saves them fourteen thousand to eighteen thousand dollars per patient in medical bills.
Losers and winners
The repercussions from putting medicine on firmer scientific footing and making hospitals more efficient at delivering care will be huge. Many hospital workers and some specialists will find themselves out of a job. Device- and drugmakers will see lower sales for some products and lower profits for many. |
| There's one more factor that contributes to our medical bills, and that's unnecessary care. We spend between one fifth and one third of our health care dollars, an exorbitant amount of money, between five hundred and seven hundred billion dollars (that's billion, with a b), on care that does nothing to improve our health. And while overhead and high prices hurt our pocketbooks, the vast amount of unnecessary care in the system also makes our health care worse than it ought to be. Unnecessary treatment and tests aren't just expensive; they also can harm patients. |
| Huge and unpayable medical bills have become the leading cause of personal bankruptcy. Uninsured cancer patients receive half as much care as the insured and may be more likely to die, depending upon the type of cancer. Uninsured car crash victims receive less care in the hospital and have a higher mortality rate than the insured. Women who lack insurance don't get regular Pap smears to check for cervical cancer. Children who are uninsured go without routine vaccinations; those with asthma don't get preventive treatment. |
Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George
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 If I get sick in the study and the treatment is suspected as the cause, who will be responsible for paying my medical bills?
You should also ask your doctor exactly who is sponsoring the research. Is it the pharmaceutical industry? Remember, you have a right to know as much as you need and want to about the research you are participating in. The basic principle of research ethics is called informed consent. As the potential participant, you, the research subject, need to know what the study is designed to find out and what you will be asked to do. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Millions of American families are struggling to pay their medical bills, while others are drowning in the debt accrued by doctor and hospital visits, according to recent studies. What's troubling is that a significant percentage of these people have health insurance.
As the cost of medical care continues to rise, consumers are bearing a greater share of their medical expenses. The additional cost comes in many forms, including higher deductibles and copayments, separate deductibles for hospital admissions, and the move from fixed-fee co-payments to percentage-based "coinsurance. |
| Washington, DC-based Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC).
For some families, filing for personal bankruptcy may be the only way to escape the debt they've piled up. However, the recent overhaul of federal bankruptcy laws makes it even tougher to extinguish those debts.
According to a Harvard study, illness and medical bills contributed to approximately half of the personal bankruptcy filings in 2001. More than 75% of the filers were insured when they incurred the debt that set them back, yet many lost coverage during their illness. |
Melody Petersen
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 Almost half of all personal bankruptcy filings in 2001 resulted from an illness or medical bills, according to a study by academics at Harvard. And more than three-quarters of those people said they had been covered by insurance when illness struck.
The surging cost of medical care was limiting opportunity in the land of opportunity. Some would-be entrepreneurs stayed in jobs that offered health benefits rather than set out on their own. Other people kept working long after they were ready to retire.
George Hatzigiannakis, the owner of Mr. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 It often takes years for autoimmune diseases like lupus to be diagnosed, and even longer for those living in underprivileged populations who lack access to good care or who might be more easily dismissed by doctors because of their difficulty in covering hefty medical bills. Moreover, during the decades that these toxic waste sites had been quietly left active like forgotten landmines in the neighborhood, residents had moved, and many had died. More people might have been sick, yes, but some were no longer around to be part of any head count. |
Melody Petersen
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| The university also tried to get the companies to agree to pay the medical bills of any volunteer injured in an experiment. If a company refused, the university made sure it did not promise to pay for the treatment of the volunteers' injuries either.
But the thorniest problem lay in the tangle of financial ties between the industry and the academics leading these trials, a web that grew more complex every year. |
Roberta Bivins
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 Although these laws carried little force, they did raise the status of 'regulars' and gave them the exclusive right to sue for the payment of their medical bills. But these first steps towards an established orthodoxy were already being undermined by Jacksonian scepticism, by the continued proliferation of other medical systems—many rather better suited to the American context—and by the burgeoning industry of medical certification. |
Melody Petersen
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| The year 2003 marked the first time that states spent more to pay the medical bills of the poor and the disabled covered by Medicaid than they spent on elementary and secondary education. When the states added in what they paid for the medical care of government workers and inmates in the state prisons, health care consumed about a third of every state budget, a percentage that was rising every year.
State and local government officials across the country had been forced to raise taxes and cut services, including education and road construction, to cover the rising cost. |
| Most people have health insurance paid for by an employer, which covers the majority of their medical bills. They don't realize how many thousands of dollars of their taxes are funneled to the medical system. Taxpayers covered nearly half the country's health care tab in 2005. At the same time, medical spending is concentrated with the minority of Americans suffering from chronic or serious illnesses, even though everyone pitches in to pay the fast-rising cost. |
| At a time when many Iowans struggled to pay medical bills and families wondered how they would afford the fast-rising tuitions at public universities, the state's doctors were enjoying low-cost, corporate-subsidized education in four-star accommodations. At the Marriott Hotel in downtown Des Moines, the physicians sat in ballrooms with crystal chandeliers, where the tables were covered with white tablecloths, and attendants kept them supplied with coffee and hard candy. |
| By the time all the medical bills had been tallied in 2005, the nation had spent an average of $6,700 for each person, or $26,800 for a household of four. Economists say the cost of medical treatment will continue on this tear, eating up more and more of what people have to spend. By 2015 Americans are expected to surrender one dollar of every five dollars they produce to the pharmaceutical industry and the rest of the nation's medical system.
Pharmaceutical executives have said over and over that Americans should be delighted by this. |
Rick Levy and Lou Aronica
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 If you stay with meditation, you will also begin to notice that the things you need are being drawn to you—the right medical specialist, a big raise just when the medical bills are piling up, and so on. Just as important, your own nature will become transparent to you. Your story behind the story will emerge and you will have the power to change it or keep it as you desire. It will seem to you that life doesn't get any better, but it does. Keep meditating, and life will keep getting better and better. |
| My clients, who represent all walks of life and all cultural, philosophical, and religious perspectives, have used it to gain everything from physical health to an increase in income so they can afford to pay their medical bills, and a whole lot more.
Be Careful What You Ask For
The Gearshift Exercise is so effective you'll want to think carefully about what you desire before you employ it. For example, take a man I've been working with over the last four years. He came up hard in New York. He could never win his father's love and never felt like he amounted to anything. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 One thing I've noticed is that when people begin taking prescription drugs, not only do they immediately suffer a big economic hit (remember that 50 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States today are due to medical bills, including prescription drugs), they also tend to lose the ability to make good decisions.
Many of these drugs, especially statin or antidepressant drugs, for example, affect people's mental acuity. They result in a loss of lucidity, which results in people no longer comprehending the big picture, and no longer making good decisions. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Then we should have our own society, where our children aren't labeled ADHD, where they don't get doped up on heavy narcotics just to attend school, where people live long lives and don't have huge medical bills, and where we don't have corruption and collusion between the USDA and the food companies that just want to sell overpriced, low nutritional density foods to a population in order to make money.
In such a nation, we can actually do some of the important stuff for humanity. |
Mike Adams
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 Plus, my medical bills are zero, I have no side effects, and I don't need a doctor's permission to treat myself with blueberries.
The medicine found in everyday foods flatly makes statin drugs obsolete. If the FDA or conventional medicine had any remaining ethics whatsoever, you would have already been told this fact. But, alas, there's no money in teaching people to eat healthy and treat high cholesterol with nature's medicines. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 We've also just learned that 50% of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills. Think about that for a moment: the disease-care industry is bankrupting our families and our nation. Only a fool would think the answer is to introduce a drug discount card or some other such nonsense. That's like tossing a cup of water on a raging house fire.
We don't need to be spending 25% of our G&P on health insurance and health care services. What we should be doing is spending something like 3% of the G&P on disease prevention and education. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Consider where we are today with organized medicine:
50% of all personal bankruptcies in America are due to medical bills.
Vioxx alone is now reportedly responsible for killing more Americans (via heart attacks) than all American fatalities in the Vietnam War. (Source: The Lancet)
2/3rds of the FDA's own drug safety scientists don't believe the agency can protect the American public from dangerous drugs. (Source: FOIA of HHS / FDA internal survey.)
Scientific censorship, intimidation, distortion of clinical trials, and the bribing of doctors is now the norm. (Source: Dr. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 A recent study says that nearly half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical bills. And that's true, but I think that the big bankruptcy in this country is the ethical bankruptcy. We are morally and ethically bankrupt as a nation. The results of that bankruptcy include skyrocketing rates of chronic disease, increased stress in daily life, reduced quality of life, growing social problems, the mass diagnosis of mental and behavioral disorders, a failing health care system, deep bankruptcy at the federal government level, and much more. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 They will be exploited for financial profit, milked for every penny up to their last dying breath, and then hounded for collections of medical bills even after passing. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Bypass a traditionally trained medical doctor, and bypass all the costs and medical bills and bankruptcy that go along with being involved with organized medicine. Instead, go straight to nature.
You do that by hooking up with a naturopath. You do that by relying on plants, foods, natural environment, sunshine, fresh water, clean air, and by getting grounded with the earth. That's how you get healthy. I've done it, along with thousands of others who have done it. Organized medicine has no benefit whatsoever in modern society, except if you've been in a car crash or something. |
| You'll have skyrocketing medical bills. You might end up in medical bankruptcy, and you'll be no better off than having done nothing.
If you follow natural health, on the other hand, you can be a healthy, happy person. You can be energetic, have fantastic mental clarity, and be free of chronic pain. You can reverse diseases such as type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and osteoporosis. You can avoid dementia, Alzheimer's, and all these so-called "diseases of aging." You can be healthy and happy. That's the world of natural health. |
Kevin Trudeau
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 I owe Kevin big time because that little $30 book has saved me thousands of dollars in medical bills, etc. I can't say enough about Kevin. Kevin, we love you and we look up to you tremendously for the work you are doing.
Carol and David B.
I have read Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About. I love this book, and I have been following as much advice from this book as much as I possibly can, and I have seen an incredible difference. Mostly my asthma is in control, and I am not taking any medications!! I have lost weight without trying to. |
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