Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The real purpose behind the medicare benefit program
Think about the administrative overhead, the paperwork, the fraud and corruption that will inevitably crop up in this program. Think about the time wasted by all the people involved in this system. What's the purpose of it? Is it really just to help senior citizens?
This plan really has two purposes: First, it makes President Bush popular by making sure he has lots of handouts for senior citizens, a demographic that happens to have a high number of active voters. Secondly, it's a big Bush handout to campaign supporters, notably Big Pharma. |
| You get an unmitigated disaster, and that's what we're seeing today with the medicare prescription drug benefit program. This program, which is just legalized theft from one group of American taxpayers to another group of American consumers (mostly the elderly), originally promised to give people discounts on prescription drugs.
The program was supposed to cost "only" a couple hundred billion dollars. It turns out that, as usual, the politicians were lying. |
| It's a simple system, but hardly anybody is willing to tell the truth about it, and this big Bush handout -- this medicare drug benefit program -- only really benefits the drug companies. It doesn't benefit the senior citizens, and it doesn't benefit the taxpayers who are footing the bill. It certainly doesn't benefit any honest, hardworking American whose income continues to dwindle under the assault of do-gooder government programs like this one. It really only benefits Big Pharma, and, of course, that was its purpose. |
Charles Barber
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 In 1945, only half a million people received Social Security benefits;66 Medicaid and medicare weren't created until 1965. Both of those programs also got off to relatively slow starts but now are massive components of the federal budget. Persons served by medicare mushroomed from 7 million in 1967 to 27 million in 2002.67 Collectively, the entitlement programs of Social Security ($488 billion), Medicaid ($300 billion), and medicare ($176 billion) now make up almost half of the federal budget.
Feeling entided to all this, we think we are also entided to happiness. |
Andreas Moritz
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 Most other countries in the world, which receive their prescription drugs from the same source as medicare, also pay the lower rates. The medicare drug plan, devised by the pharmaceutical industry and approved by lawmakers benefiting from it, will earn the pharmaceutical companies over 1.5 trillion dollars over the next 10 years; all paid for by the taxpayers who finance the medicare program. In other words, all U.S. taxpayers directly contribute to the already astronomical profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
Just consider the enormous profiteering taking place in the cancer industry. |
Michael J. Panzner
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 To make up the difference, Smetters and Gokhale have warned that Social Security and medicare payroll taxes would "need to double immediately," according to the Christian Science Monitor. The problems will grow even more intractable if health care spending exceeds the nearly 10 percent annual increases of recent decades, or if Washington adds other entitlement programs, such as the medicare prescription benefit, which alone contributed more than $8 trillion to the total. |
Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George
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 Why doesn't our government get to negotiate lower prices through medicare as is done through the Veterans Administration, for example? The simple answer is that landmark legislation—the medicare Bill Part D—was passed by Congress in 2003 to prevent this and to ensure that millions of taxpayer dollars would be spent on drugs. |
Andreas Moritz
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| David Walker, who is the nation's top accountant—the comptroller general of the United States— said the following about the new medicare plan. "The prescription drug bill was probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s." He perceives it as the most powerful force driving the United States toward bankruptcy. With one stroke of the pen, Walker says, the federal government increased existing medicare obligations nearly 40 percent over the next 75 years. |
Dawson Church
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 Changing the institutions without changing the flawed thinking behind them results only in hastening their collapse, as was evident in the medicare prescription drug benefit passed by Congress in 2004; it brought forward the date of Medicare's insolvency by eight years.13 Asking how to get the uninsured into the system—which is as far as most policymakers thinlc—is like asking how to cram more passengers onto a train that is already jammed, has some cars that are falling to pieces while others are trimmed with diamonds, is about to crash, and is heading in the wrong direction anyway. |
| Solutions like capping payments to doctors in the medicare program that provides care to the elderly, or moving patients into Health Maintenance Organizations, have, at best, slowed the growth of spending. They have not brought costs down. medicare is currently predicted to go broke by the year 2019.5 The unfunded liabilities of the system for the next seventy-five years have been calculated at a staggering $27.7 trillion.6 Faced with this crisis, national leaders have recently not been content with merely ducking the issue. |
| Changing the institutions without changing the flawed thinking behind them results only in hastening their collapse, as was evident in the medicare prescription drug benefit passed by Congress in 2004; it brought forward the date of Medicare's insolvency by eight years.13 Asking how to get the uninsured into the system—which is as far as most policymakers thinlc—is like asking how to cram more passengers onto a train that is already jammed, has some cars that are falling to pieces while others are trimmed with diamonds, is about to crash, and is heading in the wrong direction anyway. |
Michael J. Panzner
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| Before medicare was established in 1965, for instance, many older Americans found it difficult to cover the cost of health care, and widespread sentiment held that society owed them more for their troubles. In recent years, however, actuaries have increasingly warned about the rapidly rising cost of entitlement programs, such as Social Security, medicare, and Medicaid, the largesse of which have grown over time.
Undoubtedly, complacency has played a part. The United States has successfully weathered other so-called fiscal storms in the past. |
Andreas Moritz
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| The scam is orchestrated by the pharmaceutical companies, which through powerful lobbying in the American Congress, helped pass a prescription drug bill that prevents medicare from buying prescription drugs at a discounted rate for their members. Other institutions, such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), negotiate the price for prescription drugs directly with the pharmaceutical companies and pay merely 10 percent of the amount that medicare has to pay for the top 10 prescription drugs. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 Cataract surgery accounted for more than 12% of the medicare budget the last time this was evaluated in 1992 [10]. The occurrence of cataract will dramatically increase in the next 20 years as the aging U.S. population grows [9]. The large increase in cataract surgical procedures predicted for the U.S. population is expected to have a substantial effect on health care spending and, potentially, on the fiscal stability of the medicare system [11]. |
Charles Barber
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| Persons served by medicare mushroomed from 7 million in 1967 to 27 million in 2002.67 Collectively, the entitlement programs of Social Security ($488 billion), Medicaid ($300 billion), and medicare ($176 billion) now make up almost half of the federal budget.
Feeling entided to all this, we think we are also entided to happiness. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Medicare or Social Security benefits to anyone who reaches retirement age, so perhaps it's finding new ways to make sure people never reach retirement age! Keep 'em alive long enough to work 'em to death and collect their tax revenues, then knock 'em off before the benefits kick in!
It's not as far fetched as it sounds: Social Security payout benefits start at age 65, and the average lifespan of a U.S. citizens is currently 77.6 years. But within the next fifty years, that number is expected to fall to 72. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 One-year mortality among medicare beneficiaries has been reported as high as 4.6%.24
Cigarette smoking and obesity are generally conceptualized as a personal behavioral problems. In a limited sense, this is obviously true. Changing personal behavior can and does benefit one's health. Such change should be encouraged in myriad ways. Yet some ctitics have gone further, suggesting that personal responsibility for health should be imposed by outside authority. |
Andreas Moritz
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| Medicare program. In other words, all U.S. taxpayers directly contribute to the already astronomical profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
Just consider the enormous profiteering taking place in the cancer industry. The newer anticancer drugs are very expensive, especially when they are used in combination. The price of drugs for eight weeks of treatment can be $10,000 or more. If other drugs are added, this raises the cost of the medication alone to $20,000-$30,000. |
Bill Sardi
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 They feel they are facing a disease that poses a mortal risk, they paid for their health insurance or medicare, and the insurers need to do battle over costs, not the patient. But patients are now paying considerable amounts of money out of their pockets because the newer types of drugs are not covered, or only partially covered by insurance.
A report written by Jeff Donn of the Associated Press says modern anti-cancer drugs produce an unanticipated side effect: acute sticker shock. |
Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George
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| In 2006, 2,258 medicare recipients in Manhattan not diagnosed with a form of dementia were evaluated over a fourteen-year period. After adjusting for potential confounding factors (age, sex, ethnicity, education, genetic risk factor), the third who were most faithful to the diet were 39 to 40 percent less likely to develop AD than the third who were least faithful, while the third who were moderately compliant were 15 to 21 percent less likely to develop AD. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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| The 1997 Balanced Budget Act requires Medicaid and medicare Programs to reimburse hospitals for what is called "reasonable care." Thus, although it was never planned that way, emergency departments have emerged as "the ultimate safety net for those whom other providers turn away,"4 as well as "the most important and least recognized federal health care safety net program."5
The most frequent visits to emergency departments were from the traditionally disadvantaged population.6 Those 75 and older, and African Americans, had a use rate about 75% higher than that for whites. |
Bill Sardi
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| Buchwald cracked, in a March 7, 2006, column: "I've gotten so well medicare won't pay for me anymore." [Los Angeles Times, Feb. 5, 2007]
A striking finding is that terminal hospice patients who forgo treatment are living longer by days to months than patients who elect to undergo treatment. [Journal Pain Symptom-Management, Sept. 2004]
Source: Cancer 104: 2565-76, 2005
Patients talk
E-mail from a breast cancer patient
/ have a healthy lifestyle, take vitamins. I was diagnosed with breast cancer 8/19/05 - stage 2 Lumpectomy performed on 9/26/05 and sentinel node procedure. |
| American Journal of Medicine 113: 663-667, 2002]
The researchers examined the rates of screening for prostate cancer, treatment with radical prostatectomy and radiation, and prostate cancer-related deaths from 1987 to 1997 among medicare beneficiaries aged 65-79 drawn from the Seattle-Puget Sound area and Connecticut.
The PSA testing rate in the Seattle area was 5.39 times that of Connecticut, and the prostate biopsy rate was 2.20 times that of Connecticut during 1987-1990. The 10-year cumulative incidence of radical prostatectomy and external beam radiotherapy up to 1996 were 2.7% and 3. |
Dr. Abram Hoffer, MD, FRCP (C) and Dr. Harold D. Foster, PhD
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 Alzheimer's 'epidemic' could bankrupt medicare. http://www.personalmd.com/news/no3220704u.shtml
5 Gruenberg EM. The failures of success. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly Health and Society i977;55(i):3-24-
6 Gruenberg EM, Hagnell O, Ojesjo L, Mitelman M. The rising prevalence of chronic brain syndrome in the elderly. Paper presented at the Symposium on Society, Stress and Disease: Aging and Old Age, Stockholm, Sweden cited in: Henderson AS. The epidemiology of Alzheimer's disease. British Medical Bulletin i986:42(i):3.
7 European Institute of Women's Health. Dementia Care. http://www. |
Bill Sardi
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| Free samples (which were billed to medicare at $1,200), resort trips, consulting services, debt forgiveness and educational grants were also used to entice urologists to prescribe Lupron.
Many urologists and oncologists earned an extra $ 100,000 annually in income with this program, and some of the busier urologists earned over $1 million. |
John E. Sarno, M.D.
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 I do not want to sound "age-ist" in any way; however, my medicare population seems much happier when I lecture to them in two parts. Here is an excerpt of a letter from one medicare patient who liked this approach:
I attended your lectures last summer [note: she wrote this one year after treatment] and took copious notes that I have read and reread. I identify with one thought after another. The book and the notes fit me like a glove. My sciatica is gone and I am back to swimming, golfing, and more (and I am eighty-nine years of age!).
While Dr. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Health insurance and/or medicare card. •Your baseline electrocardiogram (ECG) —a miniature copy, laminated. Take your ECG readout to a copy place, reduce it to wallet size and cover it with self-stick clear plastic sheets, sold at stationery and office supply stores.
Why: Comparing a new ECG with an old one can increase the accuracy in the diagnosis of heart problems.
Joel Cohen, MD, medical director, MD RoomService/ DoctorCare, a house call practice, Scottsdale, AZ (www. mdroomservice.com), and author of ER: Enter at Your Own Risk—How to Avoid Dangers Inside Emergency Rooms. New Horizon. |
| DBS is covered by medicare and many other forms of health insurance. fkfn F°r more information on Parkinson's dis-— ease, go to the World Parkinson Congress Web site, www.worldpdcongress.org.
What Is Parkinson's Disease?
Parkinson's disease, the second most common degenerative brain disease (after Alzheimer's), affects 1 million Americans and typically begins between the ages of 50 and 79- It occurs when neurons, or nerve cells, that control movement start to die off for unknown reasons. |
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