A Few Easy Ways to Reduce Health Care Costs

I am disgusted with the politics of health care. Nearly all of it is wrong targeted and wasteful and dangerous. When the government rewards  people for living lifestyles that promote degenerative disease, and to take no responsibility for living that way, all we will get is more degenerative disease. Paying for mostly dangerous drugs to deal with high cholesterol, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease and “behavior problems”  makes for a sicker population, more irresponsible about their own health and racks up trillions in cost. Here are a couple of ideas that could reduce this without any danger to anyone, except for a few lobbyists and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

(1) Stop allowing drugs ads on public media of any kind. TV, radio, print. No drug ads period except in medical journals. The US and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow it now. President Obama could abolish this with an executive order. This practice of allowing direct advertising to consumers began in 1987 with an FDA mandate. This has lead to huge increases in drug prescribing as the ads have driven public demand. By ending this, it would drastically reduce drug usage and cost. For an interesting exercise, watch 3 hours of prime time TV and count how many drug ads you see. Cialis, Nexium, Lipitor, Boniva, Ambien, etc etc. People be com e brainwashed to demand drugs for their problems. If these same problems were presented with truly healthful solutions, many less drugs would be demanded and many would be healthier. The dollar savings would be huge.

For example:

“An Astra-Zeneca advertisement for its cholesterol-fighting drug shows a trim woman jogging down a street.” She took medication. She ate right. And ran. Yet it wasn’t enough. Her doctor advises her to switch to Crestor. In 2004, Astra-Zeneca spent $216 million promoting Crestor, almost matching the $212 million spent on Pepsi for that year (Huh and Langteau, 2007). The greatest amount of advertising money spent on pharmaceuticals in 2005 was for 10 drugs in the following seven categories: 1) heartburn, 2) insomnia, 3) cholesterol, 4) asthma and allergy, 5) nail fungus, 6) blood clots and 7) erectile dysfunction (Heinrichs, 2007). According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), DTC (Direct to Consumer) drugs are often among the best-selling drugs (United States 2002). Pharmaceutical companies spend nearly twice as much on marketing in the U.S. as they do on research and development (R&D) (Gagnon and Lexchin, 2008). There has been an upward and accelerating trend in spending on DTC advertising. In 2005, $4.2 billion was spent on DTC advertising ( United States , 2006), compared with $1 billion in 1997 (Huh and Langteau, 2007). Yet drug companies spend more promoting prescription drugs to physicians, according to the GAO, $3 billion more than to consumers in 2005 (2006).

Television advertising takes up the bulk of DTC pharmaceutical marketing expenditures, but drug marketers have increased their marketing efforts on the Internet (Sheehan, 2007) as searching for health-related information has be com e the third most com mon activity for online users (Choi and Lee, 2007). In 2003, the pharmaceutical industry spent $59 million on DTC promotion on the Internet (Choi and Lee 2007). A Cegedim Dendrite Survey reveals that as pharmaceutical industries increase their presence on the Internet, x93

From ProQuest Discovery Guides http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/discoveryguides-main.php

(2) It has been said that the bulk of the income for the American Medical Association ($300,000,000) comes from having an exclusive contract with the US government to provide health care billing codes (CPT codes).

According to Tim Bolen, Health care advocate ( www.bolenreport.com ):

“The system is exclusionary to other health care providers. There are 8,800 codes available to MDs, and less than 100 available to all 26 other health professions.  All of those other professions have to use MD codes to bill insurance or Medicare, and then explain how the code fits each time on their bills.  With this system there is no data to show how well the other 26 health professional’s services work compared to MDs.

We can probably cut health care costs by 25% if we went to a billing system that provides codes for, not just MDs, but all of the 27 different health care practitioners we have trained and authorized to practice in the US .  We’d get a record of what actually works and is most cost effective, if we did this.  Right now, there is no way to tell how well practitioners other than MDs, actually operate.  The system, because of the exclusive CPT coding system contract, does not allow this data to be recorded.  President Obama can do this with an Executive Order, as the original contract was signed by DHHS, and that department works for the President, also.”

(3) The FDA is run by the pharmaceutical manufacturers and does not always act in the interest of the American people. There is an open door between the FDA, Pharmaceutical execs, and lobbyists. There is no outside overseeing authority to regulate this. It has lead to corruption, poor health care regulation, and has served to support only pharmaceutical solutions or other invasive technologies – surgery and radiation. There are good alternatives that should be legal and available. In general they are less invasive and less costly and produce equal if not better results. President Obama should intervene and support such things as Complementary and Alternative medicine in dealing with cancer, heart disease and chronic illness. This would lead to more competition, and better care.

(4) Begin national campaigns to reinforce and reward healthy lifestyles. Those who don’t use their health care dollars, because they are healthier should be rewarded. For example, I have a physician friend who practiced traditional medicine. He admitted more people to the hospital than anyone else on the staff. In any given week he would have 30-40 inpatients. He was so popular with the hospital staff that he was elected to be Chief of Staff of the Hospital. After some years of this he got introduced to chelation therapy because his father was sick and dying of heart disease. Medical treatment had gone as far as it could in helping him. So this doctor looked to other methods because he did not want his father to die. He learned about chelation therapy at a meeting of alternative doctors. He did the treatment on this father and his condition vastly improved. Wondering is there were any other good ideas from this group of alternative doctors he began to go to more meetings and study more. Lo and behold he learned about nutrition and detoxification and herbs, and vitamins. Slowly he integrated this new knowledge into his practice. As a result his patients began to get healthier and need less care. But they were so happy with their improved health that he got busier and busier. He had to take in an associate and soon another one. One day he got a call from the head administrator of the hospital who was very serious on the phone. Doc, I need to you to come in because I am very worried. When he entered the Chiefs office what he heard from him was, “you used to admit more people to our hospital and use more of our X-ray and surgery services and anyone else in town. Now you only send us an occasional appendix. Don’t you love us anymore?”

The doctor replied, “I love you fine. But I haven’t needed to put people in the hospital like I used to because they haven’t needed it. With nutrition and detoxification they get better.”

All the hospital chief could say to this was, “how unfortunate.”

These four ideas would make a big change in how health care is run and how much it costs and would be better for the public. It would save billions instead of costing billions and lead to more quality in the system. With public demand, we can move toward it and unhook the teeth of the special interests that control it now, and truly unfortunately, not for the good of the many.