Why Our Healthcare System Isn't Healthy

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Article Title: Why Our Healthcare System Isn't Healthy

Author: Deb Bromley

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet

Word Count: 971

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Most people are well aware that an estimated 45 million

Americans currently do not have healthcare, but is the crisis

simply the lack of health insurance or even the cost of health

insurance? Is there a bigger underlying problem at the root of

our healthcare system? Although the U.S. claims to have the

most advanced medicine in the world, government health

statistics and peer-reviewed journals are painting a different

picture -- that allopathic medicine often causes more harm than

good.

People in general have always felt they could trust doctors and

the medical profession, but according to the Journal of the

American Medical Association in July 2000, iatrogenic death,

also known as death from physician error or death from medical

treatment, was the third leading cause of death in America and

rising, responsible for at least 250,000 deaths per year.

Those statistics are considered conservative by many, as the

reported numbers only include in-hospital deaths, not injury or

disability, and do not include external iatrogenic deaths such

as those resulting from nursing home and other private facility

treatments, and adverse effects of prescriptions. One recent

study estimated the total unnecessary deaths from iatrogenic

causes at approximately 800,000 per year at a cost of $282

billion per year, which would make death from American medicine

the leading cause of death in our country.

Currently, at least 2 out of 3 Americans use medications, 32

million Americans are taking three or more medications daily,

and commercials and advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs

have saturated the marketplace. Although our population is

aging, exorbitantly expensive drugs are being marketed and

dispensed to younger and younger patients, including many

children who years ago would never have been given or needed

medication, for everything from ADHD to asthma to bipolar

disease and diabetes. Clearly, the state of health in this

country is not improving even though there are an increasing

number of medications and treatments. Between 2003 and 2010,

the number of prescriptions are expected to increase

substantially by 47%. In recent years, numerous drugs

previously deemed safe by the FDA have been recalled because of

their toxicity, after the original drug approvals were actually

funded by the invested pharmaceutical companies themselves.

According to the media, thanks to advances in U.S. drugs and

medical procedures, Americans are living longer statistically,

but they are living longer sicker, with a lower quality of

life, and often dependent on multiple expensive synthetic

medications that do not cure or address the underlying causes,

but only suppress symptoms, often with a plethora of dangerous

side effects to the tune of billions of dollars for the drug

industry. Considering that the U.S. is supposed to have the

most advanced technology in the world and the best health care

system, it is at odds that we spend the most on healthcare, yet

are the most obese and most afflicted with illness outside of

the AIDS epidemic in some third world countries.

Unless you have an acute emergency that requires emergency room

care, being admitted to a hospital environment may also be more

dangerous to your health than staying out. In 2003,

epidemiologists reported in the New England Journal of Medicine

that hospital-acquired infections have risen steadily in recent

decades, with blood and tissue infections known as sepsis

almost tripling from 1979 to 2000. Nearly two million patients

in the U.S. get an infection while in the hospital each year,

and of those patients over 90,000 die per year, up dramatically

from just 13,300 in 1992. Statistics show that approximately

56% of the population has been unnecessarily treated, or

mistreated, by the medical industry.

Additionally, as a result of the overuse of pharmaceutical

drugs and antibiotics in our bodies and environment, our immune

systems have become significantly weakened, allowing

antibiotic-resistant strains of disease-causing bacteria to

proliferate, leaving us more susceptible to further disease.

Not surprisingly, incidences of diseases have been growing at

epidemic levels according to the CDC. Now diseases once

thought conquered, such as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, malaria,

and childhood ear infections are much harder to successfully

treat than they were decades ago. Drugs do not cure. They

only suppress the symptoms that your body needs to express,

while they ignore the underlying root cause. Side effects of

synthetic and chemical drugs, which even if they are partly

derived from nature have been perverted to make them patentable

and profitable, are not healthy or natural, and usually cause

more harm than any perceived benefit of the medication.

Where " physician errors " are concerned, these may not be

entirely the fault of the doctors, as they are forced to

operate within the constraints of their profession or risk

losing their license, but doctors have become pawns and

spokesmen for the drug companies, and the best interest of the

patient has become secondary. In the name of profit,

physicians are also under great pressure from hospitals to

service patients as quickly as possible, like an assembly line,

increasing the likelihood of error.

In conclusion, increases in healthcare costs are not just the

result of frivolous law suits, but are primarily the result of

a profit-oriented industry that encourages practices that lead

to unnecessary and harmful procedures being performed, lethal

adverse drug reactions, infections, expensive legitimate

lawsuits, in-hospital and physician errors, antibiotic

resistance due to overprescribing of antibiotics and drugs, and

the hundreds of thousands of subsequent unnecessary deaths and

injuries. Many people do not realize that there are healthier

natural options, and anything unnatural or invasive we are

exposed to is likely to cause either immediate or cumulative

damage over time.

For more information on how to help your body heal itself

naturally without chemicals, information on drug side effects,

and harmful disease-causing chemicals in the foods you eat and

your environment and how to avoid them, please visit the

NatureGem web site at http://www.naturegem.com.

About The Author: Deb Bromley is a science and technology

researcher and the President of NatureGem Nontoxic Living, an

organization devoted to promoting awareness of toxins in our

food and environment that can cause disease, and providing

access to nutrition information, natural remedies, and

alternative health resources. Please visit

http://www.naturegem.com for more information.

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