In my last post, I attempted to shed some light on the obvious association between SSRI medications (antidepressant drugs, like Prozac) and the recent wave of wholesale shootings/suicides. The correlation is so profound that it should at least warrant some serious investigation, yet all is quiet on that front as the politicians instead rush to blame a very old technology for a very new problem. This is a sickening exploitation of the death of children, simply to prop-up bad legislation that offers no real solutions to the problem, but instead rekindles long-standing , irrelevant battles between Special Interest Lobbies and Congress.
More than 1 in 10 Americans take at least one of these SSRI drugs regularly. Why suddenly, does everyone need to be on antidepressants, when humans have thrived for tens of thousands of years without them? Are people actually becoming more and more depressed and mentally ill? If so, then why? These are the questions that I would like to take a look at in this article
I certainly do not believe that everyone prescribed these drugs are clinically depressed nor in need of any chemical sedation. As I mentioned in the last post, my wife and I were both offered these drugs by doctors, even when we were not expressing any feelings of depression. These new wonder pills are just another fad drug (similar to Valium in the 1970s), which are being prescribed for anyone with a complaint, but no real disease. Even though I believe they are given out to perfectly healthy people, I do believe that depression has been on the rise in the last few decades, but handing out SSRI medication certainly does not answer the question as to why.
It appears to be the goal of modern medicine to treat a symptom, rather than the cause of a disease, perhaps because it is far more profitable to establish life-long treatments than simply finding a prevention or cure for a disease. I believe that there is a root cause for the massive amount of clinical depression arising in the western world and it is not simply because of a poor economy, terrorists and every other excuse being tossed around. Humans have had to deal with everyday stress of survival for millions of years and very few americans are actually affected by terrorists – only through the scare tactics shoveled out by the media.
The rise in the rate of depression seems perfectly in sync with the evolution of the American diet. Depression has been on a steady incline since the 1970s (depression in woman has doubled since 1970), which was also when the hysteria concerning high cholesterol began to take hold of America. Each decade following has pushed the desired cholesterol levels lower and lower and lower. The most recent advertisements for Crestor now claim that your doctor’s goal for your cholesterol is below 100 mg/dl – that’s suicide – literally!
Low cholesterol, depression and attempted suicide appear to go hand in hand in every clinical study. The association is undeniable. This article from Psychology Today (full article) plainly states:
As low cholesterol is linked to depression, low cholesterol is also a risk factor in suicide attempts.”.
Of course, like any modern medical publication, they paint a dichotomy by echoing the rhetoric about high cholesterol causing heart disease, even in spite of a 2009 study published in the American Heart Journal that showed that 75% of heart attack victims admitted to emergency rooms tested with low to normal cholesterol levels. Read what Dr. Dwight Lundell, a heart surgeon who has performed more than 5,000 open heart surgeries, has to say concerning the role of cholesterol in heart disease here. Why would nature evolve us to be “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” – it wouldn’t. So, one of these theories has to be wrong and I believe that the evidence for cholesterol causing heart disease is far weaker than the link between low cholesterol and depression.
This all tends to make sense once you realize that the brain accounts for 25% of the body’s total cholesterol. Your brain and nervous system are made predominantly of this molecule. Then again, we have the fact that most of our hormones are also constructed from cholesterol and it becomes obvious how low cholesterol can cause mood problems. Little wonder why vegans tend to be extremely moody and temperamental?
The human body is completely incapable of making many of the essential hormones without cholesterol, including the male hormone testosterone – perhaps explaining the need for Viagra and Cialis in our zero cholesterol society? Studies have proven that low testosterone not only causes a lower libido, but can also cause severe mood swings. Many children today are placed on low-fat diets from birth. Human breast milk is very high in cholesterol by nature, much higher than cow’s milk; I guess this was just another mistake that evolution made.
Now, babies are fed very low-fat formulas at the point in life that the brain begins developing – remember, the brain is made predominantly from cholesterol, which might explain why human milk is so high in it. Cholesterol is so important to our health, that not only is it manufactured in the liver, but every cell in the human body can synthesize cholesterol if necessary. This is why the pharmaceutical companies had to create certain drugs in order to pound cholesterol down to the unnaturally low levels they recommend. Very few people realize that the American Heart Association even scoffed at Ancel Key’s “Lipid Hypothesis” up until the year that he was appointed to their board of directors. Click here for a great breakdown on the history of how the bogus Lipid Hypothesis came into being.
Once the AHA foolishly adopted Keys erroneous theory, the drug companies ran to manufacture drugs that could lower cholesterol. This would ultimately become the 30 billion dollar a year industry that is presently their leading cash cow. Cholesterol lowering drugs are the top money-maker for the pharmaceutical industries, is it any wonder why they are the driving force behind perpetuating the lie that is the “Lipid Hypothesis” and bury any evidence to the contrary?
Most of everything that your doctor believes, was taught to them by the pharmaceutical companies and their less-than-honest studies. Here are just a few pieces of evidence of the drug companies influence over medical schools here, here and here. Even many years after leaving medical school, nearly every lecture, conference or piece of literature that your doctor is provided is paid for by the pharmaceutical companies – they are the core of modern medicine and doctors are strictly the licensed vehicle they need to distribute their wares.
Now we see that SSRI medications are beginning to close in on the profits of statins by garnering some 19 billion dollars in revenues. The pharmaceutical companies are double-dipping on this one. As long as they continue to perpetuate the myth that cholesterol causes heart disease, people will lower their cholesterol, thereby becoming depressed – not to worry, they have the answer for this with another magic pill – a pill that also causes thoughts of suicide! How long until they invent a pill that will attempt to prevent the suicidal side-effects of the SSRI? That’s how the pharmaceutical game works. Let’s take a look at just how SSRI work to prevent depression – at least in theory.
SSRI stands for “Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor”, which means that the drug increases the amount of serotonin available at the synapses of the nervous system by inhibiting the body’s ability to re-uptake the excess serotonin. These nerves also include the brain. The synapse is a fancy name for the gap between nerve endings. As a signal is sent along a nerve, it ultimately reaches a nerve ending, where the signal must be relayed across this gap or “synapse”. This relay is achieved by the secretion of certain chemicals, like acetylcholine, serotonin and glutamate called neurotransmitters.
Any one of these neurotransmitters in extreme abundance can be considered an excitotoxin, because they will keep the nerves constantly firing, which we are not designed to do. This action can eventually cause cell damage to the nerve. Do any of those chemical neurotransmitters sound remotely familiar with any ingredients in the American diet? How about glutamate – as in Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) – does this ring a bell? MSG became a necessary ingredient in most processed foods the minute that the fat was removed. Food without fat can become rather flavorless and boring to eat. Flavor enhancers, such as sugar, salt, MSG and aspartame made up for the loss of fat and excited the nerve endings, which creates a pleasurable experience in the brain when eating this non-nutritious garbage.
Glutamate is used in literally thousands of food products from frozen pizzas to chips and cookies. It is hard to know all the products that contain MSG, because the federal government allows manufacturers to list it as “natural flavorings” in their ingredients list – but Americans are consuming a butt-load of this chemical. So, is the real problem with the rise in depression caused by a lack of serotonin or is it too much glutamate? High glutamate levels have also been associated with OCD and other brain disorders in some studies. Glutamate is also manufactured in our bodies from blood glucose, so it has been found to be very high in those with type 1 diabetes, also causing depression (source).
Whenever any of these neurotransmitters become out of balance, depression is sure to follow. It is very apparent after a little study that the modern problem of depression is rarely that serotonin levels are too low, but that glutamate levels are far too high and that is easily associated with the modern diet of processed foods, which jack-up blood glucose levels and dump tons of excitotoxins, such as glutamate and aspartame, into our children’s bloodstream. The following is a must-see report on flavor enhancers aired 60 Minutes. They are quite candid on what the manufacturers are trying to achieve when designing these chemical cocktails.
They admit that their goal is to create an addiction and design flavors to not “linger”, so you will want to eat more and more, never being satisfied – how ethical is this practice in a nation suffering from a rising obesity problem? By every definition, these flavor enhancers behave more like a drug and just like street drugs, they continue to get more powerful as the technology progresses.
The medical industry’s solution is very similar to their solution to the imbalance of fatty acids, also caused by the modern diet. The medical community would have us believe that humans do not get enough omega 3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA, in their diet and therefore why they constantly push fish and flaxseed oil to patients. But, the reality is that americans consume far too much omega 6 fatty acid via vegetable oils (actually seed oils, because they came from grains or beans).
This again is a mainstay of processed foods and is also recommended as being more heart healthy than saturated fat. Rather than have people cut down on the amount of plant derived oils, the insanity is now to attempt to match the over-consumption and resulting inflammation of omega 6 fatty acids with an over-consumption of omega 3 fatty acids.
In a similar way, these same geniuses are attempting to offset the high glutamate levels, caused by a diet high in processed foods, by jacking up the serotonin levels at the synapse of the nerves. This is a complete over excitement of the nerve cells and is little wonder why this experiment is beginning to back-fire. Their logic reminds me of the children’s song, where the old woman accidentally ate a fly and then she decided to eat a spider to catch the fly. She continues to eat larger and larger animals to get rid of the last one, until ultimately eating a horse, which finally kills her (lyrics here)).
I don’t think you can cheat nature this way – excess is excess, but no entity of commerce would dare advise anyone to reduce the consumption of any product, when they can double their profits by advising you to double your consumption of something else. It’s like telling you to eat a pound of poison and not worry, because I have a pound of antidote. Who would do this? The old woman in the story would be proud of this logic, unfortunately she’s too dead to enjoy it.
I am sure that the people who have very low cholesterol and are inundating their bodies with all these excitotoxins do feel better when first taking these drugs, but we can see that it leads to a much larger meltdown as time passes. It also appears that the problem becomes even worse when someone on these SSRI medications withdraws from them. These drugs are extremely addictive and create a dependence by taking away the body’s natural ability to “feel happy” or “good” without the drug.
Not unlike methamphetamines, this dependence seems to become permanent or at least have withdrawal symptoms so long that few people make it without going back to the drug or committing suicide. It would seem that the dopamine receptors are severely crippled after long-term damage to the nerve cells, so with or without the drug, the patient experiences a hopelessness and inability to feel good about life anymore.
With methamphetamines, the dosages must be continually increased in order to achieve the happy feeling the user desires – ultimately the drug no longer delivers the happy feeling at all, but the drug must be continued just to prevent falling into a feeling on total desolation. Without the drug, their life becomes a dark and miserable place. I think we are seeing evidence that these SSRIs can produce a similar result and a similar feeling of despair in some users when the drug is no longer taken.
Some of these maniac shooters had stopped taking their medication prior to their explosion. This leads many to believe that these people were insane to begin with and that the SSRI medication made them civil. Once they stopped taking the medication, they went back to being nuts. This could be a possibility, but that theory begins to fall apart when we see how many of the shooters were still on their medication when they went postal and the fact that very few of them had shown any signs of violent behavior towards others prior to being on the drugs. (Here is a list of shooters and the drugs they were on or withdrawing from at the time of the shootings)
We will never know the answer, because no one cares to investigate this problem. The politicians, news media and Hollywood know-it-alls see these shootings as an opportunity to further other political agendas they hold dear – they also hold the megaphone with which to shout their opinions much louder than the rest of us and draw all attention away from this problem.
Though I believe that many doctors prescribe these drugs to people who are not depressed or are just going through a temporary depression with an obvious cause (death in the family, divorce, loss of job, etc..), but there is a growing population of people who are manic-depressive, and that number is most likely growing because of the deterioration of the American diet. As the medical professionals continue to push the recommended cholesterol level lower and lower and the manufacturers of these flavor enhancers continue to make them more powerful, this problem will become worse.
Each generation of children are raised on more highly processed diet than the previous one – food lower in fat and higher in exitotoxins. Younger and younger children are being placed on these drugs as a result. Our government has pretty much taken over the diet of the American children through the school system. There are some states who have begun to make the school lunch program mandatory, not allowing parents to send their children to school with a homemade lunch.
I have read other stories of some schools that inspect the lunches sent from home and have confiscated any foods that their diet guidelines doesn’t agree with (the confiscation was claimed to be a misunderstanding, but this is the type of problems that will arise once the genie is let out of that bottle).
This next video is a good illustration of just how fake our modern food can be. Remember as you watch this, according to the story of the confiscated lunch in North Carolina, the chicken nuggets were the school system’s replacement for the turkey sandwich. Let’s see what our government considers a superior food.
I am not sure how American parents are going to take back control of the food that their children eat, but if something is not done soon, this problem will continue to grow, no matter how many weapons that the government decides to ban. The school lunch mandate also included fruit juice, which may as well be soda as far as quantity of sugar and artificial flavoring. If a parent does not want their child drinking this liquid candy, what right does a school have provide it to the child?
In Summary
It seems quite clear that the problem begins with this American diet that is low in healthy fat and cholesterol, yet high in sugar, starch and flavor enhancers (excitotoxins). Low cholesterol and high glutamate levels is a recipe for depression, OCD, and ADHD. This leads to a visit to the doctor, who will no doubt prescribe one of these drugs, further elevating the level of excitotoxins at the nerve synapse, which will ultimately cause cell damage to the nerve endings and dependence on stronger and stronger doses. Given the fact that these drugs are being administered to people at a younger and younger age, even at the point where a child’s brain is still growing and developing, how are we surprised when these kids go off the deep end? And why is it that our leaders in both politics and medicine cannot see this pattern and refuse to investigate?
I think this is the appropriate time to say, “follow the money”. The pharmaceutical companies have an endless goldmine propping up the lie that cholesterol is deadly and setting the desired level far too low to achieve by diet, thereby needing their cholesterol lowering drugs to smash cholesterol down to a level that nature never intended (remember, their statin drugs work by crippling the liver’s ability to manufacture cholesterol – like everyone’s liver decided to take out a contract on our hearts). This accounts for 30 billion dollars per year for statin drugs. Perpetuating this lie for profit has also caused the American people to reduce their fat intake, even to their children, whose developing brains need cholesterol far more than an adult.
This all leads to depression, onset by the lack of cholesterol, coupled with the high intake of excitotoxins. The fact that children consume more junk food than adults, further complicates the problem as junk foods are inundated with these flavor enhancers. Now we finish off the poor child’s brain by tossing in more excitotoxins in the form of drugs in an attempt to offset the ones in the highly processed foods. Using favor enhancers is far cheaper to produce processed food and the removal of fats also extends their shelf life, so it is far more profitable to the food manufacturers to continue this pattern.
Then we have the fact that the politicians not only receive huge contributions from both of these entities (pharmaceutical companies and processed food manufacturers), but they also have other agendas that expand federal government power by taking away the liberty of the people to make their own choices. It was not only the talk of gun bans (the dream of every politician), but there was also a lot of rhetoric concerning the expansion of mental health – translation: MORE POWERFUL DRUGS and easier access to them.
Given the fact that Obama’s goal is “Mandate people to behave” (according to his interpretation of behavior), may we also see court ordered medications for those deemed mentally ill in our near future? Possibly even those deemed physically ill? A heart attack victim may be ordered by the court to take statin drugs once Obamacare becomes the law of the land.
Why people continue to place the welfare of their children into the hands of a government that has lied to its people so many times and been flat-out wrong in may of its assumptions, boggles the mind. It is actually not so hard to understand once you see the fear that is created and maintained by our leaders and the media by the corporations and special interest groups that support them both.
I plan to cover this in greater detail in an upcoming post in my newest category called “Fear Mongering”. Creating fear is the favorite tool of commerce and it is through that fear that we surrender our right to make choices for ourselves and do what we’re told by the media and their sponsors. Americans must find the courage to take charge of their own lives and decisions, before we completely lose the ability or freedom to make those choices.
I completely agree. Americans would rather take information fed to them off the tv or email, etc. As opposed to researching it, reading articles, and truly seeking out the truth. An example, how many times have you gotten a fwded email from a friend, family member, or coworker that seemed helpful and accurate but after a couple quick fact checking searches you learned was a bunch of bolagna. And they meant well by it. They weren’t trying to lead you astray or harm you. These are people who hopefully have your best interest at heart. So if misinformation happens with people you know and care about, you think that peoole who run consumer based businesses who are in business for the soul purpose to make money always have your “best interest” at heart? Of course not. People need to learn to question things and people that do have information, that are smart enough to help fight against some of the ludicrous lies being told should. For those of you who aren’t for shame. To much is given much is required.
Thanks Jacqueline. It’s rather frightening the way that people take anything they read or hear as gospel truth, without any further investigation. I have received thousands of those urban legend emails that people blindly pass on before checking the veracity of the story. In the past, this may have taken some effort, but with today’s technology it become less excusable. It only takes a minute to search one of these stories at a site like Snopes.com before sending it on to your entire address book or posting it to your Facebook page.
The internet is a great tool for spreading information quickly, unfortunately it is more often used to spread misinformation. The television media is completely useless. It boggles my mind that people can see millions of dollars worth of advertising flash before their eyes and then believe that the television news is bringing us the truth concerning their sponsor’s product and services.
The modern educational system teaches people what to think, not how to think. We are taught not to question what we are told. Anyone who questions the norm is immediately criticized and put down as a “conspiracy theorist”, wearing tin foil hats, so no one dares to question. If this were true, then there are some pretty great thinkers throughout history that should have been labeled as such and most of them were in their time.
I agree with everything you said–and if that is not depressing in itself, I don’t know what is. The more I read and ask questions, the more I realize how brainwashed we have become by the media and the government. What happened to critical thinking?
I don’t know how long it will take, but the processed food with its chemical enhancements has to end. I have crohn’s disease and I am convinced it is because my body is more sensitive to what it’s fed and the environment it’s in and not because it is “broken” in some way.
I am telling family and friends everything I know and challenging them to do their own research, but it is an uphill battle. I’m sure some think I’m borderline crazy but I really believe that as a species, we are going to die out in the very near future if we don’t change the food we eat.
Thanks Carolyn. Even if we don’t die out, I do believe that we will see a significant shortening of the human lifespan – we have actually already begun to see it. I would like to believe that this is when people will wake up, but I doubt it. They will just keep doing more of the same, hoping for different results.
Every time they lower the desired cholesterol level and yet heart disease continues to climb, the experts always claim that it must have to be even lower, which is how it has been pushed t the lethal levels suggested now. Cancer risks tend to go up when cholesterol levels drop below 150, as does death by suicide. I’m not sure there is an answer for the population as a whole, because it is too profitable for companies to keep things the way they are.
People tend to believe anything that they hear repeated over and over, so the companies with large advertising power will continue to dictate what people eat and put on their bodies. The candidates that typically win elections are the ones that spend the most in advertising, so people are basically bought. This is why the drug companies spend more money in advertising than they do in research.
Sorry to hear about your Crohn’s Disease. I met a couple of people who suffered Crohn’s while in the hospital, it is a crippling disease. Many doctors recommend that Crohn’s sufferers eat more fiber, but more recent studies have found that a high fiber diet makes the condition much worse – especially insoluble fiber (from grains, beans and legumes). Have you tried to reduce these foods? My colitis cleared up after dropping these foods.
Excellent article; I’ll definitely be back to read more!
Thanks, Val. Hopefully I’ll have some new stuff to read when you return. My life has been kind of flipped upside down recently, so. I haven’t published anything new in a while. For this I apologize to me readers.
Great blog site! I’ve been engrossed catching upon articles for quite a few hours now and have really enjoyed re-learning some of these topics from your unique perspective. With regard to this article, I only wanted to point out one thing you wrote:
“The most recent advertisements for Crestor now claim that your doctor’s goal for your cholesterol is below 100 mg/dl”
But in the screen shot it states that the goal is <100 for LDL. As far as I know, LDL should be below 100 (mine was 96 last I checked). Of course, if TOTAL cholesterol were that low, that is indeed suicide.
Thanks for that observation Liberty Shovel. It is a favorite deception in the media to have the fine print say one thing while the narrative implies something else. Which one do you think the majority of people pay attention to? Even doctors pay more heed to the narrative. My father’s doctor has driven his total cholesterol down to 111 and continues to push him to take it down below 100.
Many doctors today see no real problem with total cholesterol below 100. In a similar manner, PPIs are also written in the fine print NOT TO be used regularly (14 day maximum treatment, before waiting 14 days to restart), because they can lead to anemia and bone loss in clinical studies, but the narrative always suggests that they can be used everyday, in definetely. I know several people who have done this with grave consequences – and all by the instructions of their doctors. Every intestinal transplant patient was placed on Nexium following the transplant and kept on them eternally by the doctors. I was the only that refused after the first month. I am also the only one who has perfectly normal CBC numbers. The rest lack that ability to absorb vitamin B 12 and make red blood cells, because the PPIs ultimately interfere with the intrinsic factor pathway, necessary for the absorption of B12.
Cheerios is another example of this shell game in advertising. The narration suggests that Cheerios can lower cholesterol by 7 points, whereas the fine print on the label says that those results were achieved in combination with a low fat diet and exercise. To make it worse, the clinical study showed that the diet and exercise was able to achieve an 12 point drop in total cholesterol, meaning that the Cheerios were not only benign to the process, but were quite counterproductive. People would do better with the diet and exercise and drop the Cheerios altogether.
There is not a lot of emphasis placed on LDL and HDL, except to reference that bogus “good cholesterol vs bad cholesterol” nonsense. There is only one type of cholesterol and the lipoproteins are their carriers, because fat is not soluble in blood. All recent science has shown LDL, HDL and triglycerides to be far greater markers for possible coronary problems, but most people and their doctors still place all the emphasis on total cholesterol. I really don’t understand it, especially being LDL cholesterol is a calculated number and not a true number. When triglycerides are too elevated, LDLs cannot be calculated at all. Either way, people are having their cholesterol driven far too low. People with low total cholesterol tend to have a higher rate of cancer, depression (including suicide) and generally a higher “all cause” death rate.
Just checking back to see if all is well.. I see you have made a couple of comments so I assume you will be posting again.. I’ll keep checking back.
Be well,
Cap’n Jan
Hey Cap’n Jan, thanks for your concern. Yes, I have been answering comments over the last few months, but haven’t published anything new in a while – I have written many pieces, just not proof-read and edited yet. I hope to be publishing some new things real soon, once I can get things back in order here. It’s been an event filled year for me. Thanks again.
Whew, I was worried about you. Glad to hear you are okay.
Thanks for the update Wolverine! I know you’re a busy man… I’ll keep checking back and occasionally give a nudge!
I hope you are doing well health wise.
It is an interesting phenomena the net. I do not know you, will probably never meet you in person. But I DO care about you and what happens to you. You have, with your writings, joined my circle of ‘care abouts’.
Fair Winds,
Cap’n Jan
Wolverine!, love the article, and read much of the others you put up. I am on it, reading you, Dr. Davis (Wheatbelly) Grain Brain, and a new book by Denise Minger (Death by food Pyramid). These all dovetail together to spell out the same message.
The Ann Landers moment I have is that my wife’s best friend is a renown nutrition professor at our local UC. Mostly famous for sports nutrition(hardcore conventional wisdom). Any mention of my acquired knowledge evokes a lot of violent push back (“don’t even mention that crap to me! What degree do you have? Why do I have to listen to you describe how you are killing yourself?!!). She takes some of the medications mentioned in the post and could benefit from a proper diet. Lots of grains (healthy whole grains of course), reduced fat intake, little red meat. Also, has elevated LDL #s.
Sum up, have a strategy to get through to her without acrimony?
I know more than a few people in my same predicament.
Best regards, Steve
You had me eatin out of your hand dude till you dissed Obama care…don’t even go there with me…all cred lost with you
Yeah right…. I seriously doubt that you agreed with much I had to say, because no one changes their mind on that much information based solely on one point they disagree with (not normal people, anyway). Doesn’t quite work that way in the real world. A point I will continue to stand firm on, based on what I have seen.
You tell your story to Wanda, a middle aged African American woman who was one of the sweetest people I ever met. Wanda had no family to help take care of her after her intestinal transplant (which takes about a full year before the patient can care for themselves – cook, clean, go to the doctors. etc.). My wife tried several times to talk to her Medicaid social worker and get her a home nurse, but they refused, saying they do not provide that benefit.
Wanda died about 4 months after her transplant of dehydration after being released from the hospital. Not only was this a sad loss of a beautiful life, but a complete waste of taxpayer’s money. We told the social worker that she would probably die without help and asked why they would spend nearly a million dollars of taxpayer’s money on a transplant, just to let her die because they would not spend a little extra for a home nurse in her rare case of no family? This is what we can expect to see a lot more of under any government run health care system and Wanda wasn’t an isolated case.
This is one area I see no encouragement for abuse. My wife and the mothers, fathers and spouses of the other transplant patients would not have trusted the care-taking of their loved ones to anyone but themselves. Even if the government would have provided this service, we would have refused it. In the cases like Wanda though, it would have meant the difference of life or death. She would not have succumb to dehydration with a care-taker.
Our disagreement on this issue is solely base on my real world experience versus your wishful thinking. People will suffer and die, because the government makes bad decisions based on ridiculous rules. Medicaid will pay the entire bill for any hospitalization that occurs on the first day of the month. If the patients ends up in the hospital on any other day, they will get stuck with 20% of the bill — and this makes sense to you? Who makes these rules? If they check into the hospital on the first day of the month, then all of their medical bills will be paid in full for the following quarter, but any other day and you’re screwed.
The only thing this accomplishes is encouraging people to defraud the system, because they have no other choice. People of low income cannot afford those bills, so they simply check themselves into the ER on the first of the month, even when they are healthy. They do not mean to defraud, they’re just trying to survive within a broke system which makes no sense.
Because of the ridiculous share-of-cost and donut holes for medications, most patients of low income have to get prescriptions for expensive drugs they do not need and toss in the trash. This is because it doesn’t matter what the sum total of all of your drugs for the month are, it only matters what the bill for the drugs purchased on the first day of the month are. Patients make sure that the bill for the drugs on the first day of the month exceed their share-of-cost.
It is not hard to get doctors today to write scripts for very expensive drugs that you don’t need. So there are literally millions of dollars of drugs being flushed down toilets (and tainting the city water supplies as their treatment plants do not filter out molecules that small), in order to meet that share-of-cost on one day of the month. Now everyone in major cities are drinking and bathing in drug-ladened water and spending millions in tax dollars to do it, because the system sucks and you want to increase this type waste?
This is a common waste of money, simply because the rules are stupid and are not only designed not to stop abuse, they are designed to encourage abuse. As a matter of fact, the average person could not afford to get along without abusing the system. If you don’t spend X amount on drugs by the first day of the month, then you must pay for all your drugs, up to your full gross income per month (this is how share-of-cost actually works). That makes sense to you? Someone can afford to pay their full gross salary towards their medications alone (no accounting for mortgage, rent, groceries, gas, car payment), just because they filled their script on the second day of the month? If that makes sense in your brain, then can see why we disagree on many things and I’m proud of that fact.
With Obamacare or any other government run healthcare, you can expect or see people forced into even more creative abuses of the system. The government will continue to write stupid rules which would make it impossible for those who need medical care to afford it, unless they run up an artificially high bills on the right day of the month and then the government benefits will kick in. I’m quite sure that your view of what you think Obamacare will accomplish is quite unrealistic to what it really is. It will not be free health care for everyone — if it was, no one would disagree with it. It will be a bad program loaded with silly rules that make no logical sense, just like Medicaid and Medicare are presently. Why would they get it right this time? They couldn’t even get their computer system to work.
Once government runs all health care, there will be more mandates (he first claimed he wouldn’t mandate Obamacare while running for president, then it suddenly became mandated). If the government believes that statin drugs save lives, they will mandate everyone take statins to save them money in health care, but what if they’re wrong, like they usually are? These drugs have bad side-effects and have never been proven to prevent heart disease and only the government could mandate such a thing – taking away the last freedom people have — freedom to choose what’s best for their health.
So I make no apologies. The government screws up everything they touch and this one creates way too many opportunities for the rich pharmaceutical companies to dictate what we should and should not take. Colonoscopies will be mandated, even though they injure and kill people and have never been proven to prevent or diagnose anything. Must be nice to wear such rose colored glasses as to be completely ignorant of the fact that such big money has influence over government. If ignorance is bliss, then you are one of the most blissful people in the U.S.. Keep dreaming, because the government can always turn your best dreams into your worst nightmares.
Wolverine, your comment points up the evils of an *insurance* system, which will have abuses by both providers and recipients whether it is controlled by the government or by private companies. Obamacare is a big improvement for a lot of people. It’s not perfect, but the system before that wasn’t either. Someday maybe United States will get a more civilized health care system like most other first world countries.
Actually my 6yr old came down with leukemia in 1976. Yes, it was cured, but the radiation and chemo treatment given to a developing brain left her with severe learning disabilities. Ultimately she died from a brain tumor at age 40 in 2011 attributed to the radiation years before.
I wear glasses, but trust me they are no where near a shade of rose. I have your back, W…been there done it
I am very sorry to hear about your daughter Deedee. I do understand the damage of all that radiation. I barley survived losing my intestines and having an intrstinal transpant only to end up with Multilpe Myeloma (a rare cancer which eats away your bones) from all of the CT scans and chemicals driving down my immune system.
Sorry if I seemed like an ass, I just have a raw nerve where government help is concerned. Being disabled has offered me too many opportunities to deal with the government benefits and the screwy rules which make absolutely no sense at all. The real kicker is I shouldn’t need their help. If they didn’t place such ridiculous caps on malpractice lawsuits. I lost my intestines due to doctor’s incompetence, but no lawyer in the world would touch a catastrophic case where the cost exceed three million dolars, just to collect 300,000 dollars (all of which would be taken by the state to recover their expenditures). If a doctor causes 3 million in damages, they should be accountable for at least that 3 million.
I have had nothing but headaches dealing with the government and saw so many other people suffer and die because of government red tape. So, excuse me if I will never have faith in the government running anyhting better. Besides accoriding to the U.S. Conctitution, government should not be allowed to run entities in the pirvate sector, it creates a conflict of interest. Sorry again to hear about your misfortunes.
Good read and informative.