CYA Disease Care System CYA

The past few months have seen tremendous change in the "health care" system. By the increasing advertising I am seeing, you would think that there are no problems at all! Never mind the fact that drug companies have increased prices by over ten percent since the first of the year. Never mind the flap over better recommendations designed to save patients the stigma and stress of false positives for breast cancer. Ignore, if you can the huge increase in ads for drugs that have been proven useless in reducing heart attack and stroke. Just try to ignore the increased advertising for affordable insurance. Oh, by the way, try not to pay any attention to the rapidly increasing waistline of over half of all Americans! Like a patient who rallies just before the death rattle kicks in, the entire system is putting a good face on their horrific record, afraid that their days are numbered.

I live in a city of 100,000 people. To the numbers in perspective: Three cities this size are eliminated, or at least their population is wiped out each year through the authorized (but inappropriate) use of prescription drugs. The illegal use of these controlled substances is the fastest growing type of recreational drug use in our country today.

Prevention of disease costs less than ten percent of the treatments designed to help patients after they become sick, but the funding isn't there for that! We are breeding a race of sick folks so that people will still have jobs treating us. This is a modern example of putting the cart before the horse. I'm pretty sure that the rise in cancer and allergies are related to environmental degradation, but this aside, we have no interest in finding out because these thoughts make us uncomfortable. What makes me uncomfortable is the fact that when I moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin, the doctors who "treated" me looked in my mouth and said, "Yep, he's got Green Bay Throat." They would say it in the office, but when we asked them to tell the newspaper, or at least write it down on some sort of document, they would wrinkle up their face and ask if we were crazy. These gatekeepers of "health" outright refused to go after the polluters of our air. They made enough money to move out of the valley, into the fresher air of the country.

Pardon me if I'm calling out folks who we were trained to respect, but there is fault enough to go around. Drug company representatives lie, stretch the truth, and claim statistically insignificant risks of their products. When your relative is the one dying, it won't matter if it is statistically insignificant. I have spoken with enough people who know, these corporate outlaws are protected, even encouraged by our government, no matter what they tell us. Even the insurers are to be questioned. Why do we allow them to make bets on our health? How can they be allowed to cut us off for making claims? If I were to make a bet and lose, I'm pretty sure that I would have to pay. Most questions have easy answers, this issue isn't much different. People who have a vested interest in business as usual will tell you that many of these problems are difficult to solve and "too complex" for you to understand, but don't believe it. If something looks like a red herring, smells like fish, and lurks beneath the reflective surface, avoiding the light of day, there is a good bet that it is a red herring. Shady characters hate the light of day, and people looking at them. Lets turn the lights on this decrepit system, expose the charlatans and get on with funding for prevention.