Some monstrous lies just won’t go away. Of the twenty or so huge lies that support big profits from dangerous drugs, lies which are still circulating, none is more pervasive and more damaging to America’s health and its wallets than the grand myth created by the Framingham Heart Study. The Framingham myth and the other big “only drugs-bring-health” myths still believed by the vast majority of the American people are also myths that prop up the reputation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the most corrupt single watchdog agency on American soil.  There is, on the other hand, a study which the FDA has pooh-poohed several times, because the FDA believes that only the FDA knows what works for the health of Americans, that study is a bit of research we definitely need to look at . . . But let’s do this story right and go back to the very beginning  . . . .

Western medicine as we know it started with Hippocrates, most famous for speaking the wisest words in medical practice: “First do no harm!” Hippocrates lived 90+ years by practicing what he preaced during the 5^th and 4^th Centuries B.C. when the average life span was probably 22-23 years. If Hippocrates is right, then the FDA and the AMA and a lot of American doctors are practicing quackery . . . you know what’s going on, just listen to the incredible provisos given with every drug advertised on television. If these nostrums, conconctions and potions are capable of so much harm that to protect themselves the drug companies must read its sad litany of gruesom side effects to you, Hippocrates wouldn’t characterize them as medicine and neither should you . . . because first of all, they DO cause harm, often.

Another 5^th Century B.C. Greek who gets a lot of unjustified credit is Herodotus, a historian whose “Histories” is considered one of the seminal works in Western Culture. While some definite value comes from Herodotus’ work, Herodotus told of a fountain in Ethiopia containing a very special water, an elixir, that not only removed all the bodily ailments and disease but which virtually instantaneously restored the entire body to a state of vibrant glowing youth. This kind of thing exemplified the myths about human health prevalent right up to about the 17^th Century A.D. In many ways we today in the 21^st Century are still under the spell of Herodotus, still believing there is some magic answer to our health care problems and wishes.

More than two thousand years after Herodotus’ nonsense, Ponce de Leon died in Florida in a vain search for that same fountain then reputed to be in the New World. In 1975, however, an American public health researcher, Dr. Lester Breslow, actually did find the actual fountain of youth . . . and, of course, his discovery has been largely ignored ever since.  Only a one-man campaign by a health educator and three-time marathoner named Rajjpuut has kept Dr. Breslow’s discoveries from being forgotten altogether. Rajjpuut has been championing the “Seven Golden Rules of Health” for the last thirty-five years contributing articles and letters to the editor for Runner’s World and the Rocky Mountain Roadrunner newsletter, four blogs here on Townhall and other similar publications and passing on the good news by word of mouth to whosoever might listen for five or six minutes.

Much as corrupt religious leaders in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries stymied Galieleo and Copernicus’ discoveries of a heliocentric cosmology, the “Seven Golden Rules of Health” discovered by Dr. Breslow and long championed by Rajjpuut is “the law of gravity for human health” which cannot make its truths known because of the deliberate perpetuation of numereous health care myths beneficial to the bottom line for big pharmaceutical companies . . . and most importantly because the truth would discredit the corruption-ridden FDA.

Rajjpuut took inspiration from the longitudinal heath study on the "robust elderly" that was conducted by a team of California University researchers seeking behaviors which "vigorous older people" shared in common. The original UCLA study by Dr. Breslow never, never received the attention received by other research like that of the increasingly discredited Framingham heart study where the first, now totally discredited, ties between heart disease and high cholesterol were hypothesized. 

No other myth has been more profitable for the pharmaceutical industry, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars in profits from cholesterol-lowering drugs. For a time based upon the Framingham study, eggs were even singled out as an unhealthy food.  Imagine that, perhaps the most healthy item of all we humans consume, the egg was called “dangerous.”  Almost as soon as the Framingham study was concluded it was attacked as bogus science much like today’s Climate Gate controversy has repudiated global warming alarmism.  When Framingham Risk Data using cholesterol levels were applied to British men over a period of ten years, 84% of heart disease occurred in men classified as low risk; and 75% of the men classified as high risk using the Framingham Risk data were still free of heart disease ten years later.   In a phrase low cholesterol is more dangerous than high, the body needs cholesterol for the brain and cardio-vascular system to function correctly,

In contrast,  Breslow’s original Seven Golden Rules of Health data focuses upon “healthy lifestyle” for those interested in better health, fitness, longevity, lowering medical expenditures and higher quality lifestyle and unlike the Framingham data the UCLA study by Lester Breslow has never been challenged and probably never will be.  However, these discoveries are deliberately ignored because corporate profits are at stake and your health be dammed.

The Original Research

In 1975 the results of the ten-year longitudinal study of vigorous older people conducted by Dr. Lester Breslow of the UCLA School of Public Health were unveiled and Dr. Breslow summarized it succinctly: “The daily habits of people have a great deal more to do with what makes them sick and when they die than all the influences of medicine.” Dr. Nedra Belloc of the California Health Department, working with Breslow, added, "In our study, the men who reported that they engaged in active sports had the lowest mortality -- just half that experienced by men who reported they only sometimes gardened or exercised."

Breslow's UCLA study attracted virtually no attention even though its substance was clearly quite revolutionary for its time and the positive implications of the importance of simple daily behaviors were shocking.  Rajjpuut still can’t believe it to this day. As he said back in 1978, "it's as if this wonderful, life-altering, hopeful study has never taken place. I’ve made it my mission to talk about the seven golden rules to every intelligent person I've met since then."  Breslow's seven golden rules of health rank on a par with the Hippocratic Oath, but somehow that great man's most powerful research discovery has all but been ignored for well over three decades now.

Besides the pharmaceutical “cover up” in favor of Framingham and against the “Seven Golden Rules,” the apathy toward the study and its results was also a product of the times. The word “aerobics” a decade earlier had been still a strictly scientific word which had never been applied to the concept of exercise. The first breakthroughs along those lines did not occur until Air Force Surgeon General (actually a colonel) Kenneth Cooper wrote a bestseller '''Aerobics''' in 1968. Joggers and runners and other endurance athletes in 1975 were rare and often the subject of curiosity and even derision according to “Runner’s World” magazine exercise guru Joe Henderson. The concept that endurance athleticism “could save your life and enhance the quality of your life" was unappreciated by the public. The seven key behaviors distilled from the study were:

The Seven Golden Rules of Health

1. 1.       No tobacco or drug use
2. 2.      Practice regular vigorous exercise
3. 3.      Maintain a healthy normal weight
4. 4.      Eat breakfast daily
5. 5.      Sleep 7-8 hours nightly
6. 6.      Drink alcohol in extreme moderation only
    
   7.  Eat 3-4 small meals regularly every day

    

Rajjpuut observed in 1976, “not a surprise in the lot of ‘em. The seven golden rules are telling us that if you’d like to spend a whole lot of your life feeling like a healthy young animal: then all you have to do is ‘live your life just like a healthy young animal lives.’”

A huge surprise, however, emerges from the synergistic wallop the seven golden rules provide when practiced as a unit. According to Dr. Breslau when the habits were extrapolated to the general populace, “We found that a man of 55 who practiced six or seven of the (golden) rules had the same life expectancy as a 20-year old man who only practiced one, or none of the rules.” Rajjpuut explained it this way: “to an insurance company, the two men have the same ‘actuarial age,’ that is it would not be a shock if they both died on exactly the same day 28 years in the future.”

Just let yourself imagine the quality of life for those 35 years between ages 20 and 55 for the practitioner of the Seven Golden Rules compared to the total lack of quality in the 27 final years of life for the young man with the totally dissolute life habits. Rajjpuut, from the first pamphlets at Blue Cross and Blue Shield, actually emphasized “Eight Golden Rules of Health.” At a time when many cars were not safety equipped and many states did not have safety belt laws, he insisted that the eighth golden rule was “Always buckle your seat belt in a car or plane.”

Dr. Breslowe, the unappreciated messenger

It might be surprising that the work which Dr. Lester Breslow considered his "single greatest research discovery" is probably the least appreciated among all his contributions in the field of public health. Dr. Breslow is not unknown: he was the recipient of the the first Lifetime Achievement in Public Health Award from the New York Academy of Medicine. Among his best received publications are: "A Life in Public Health: an Insider's Retrospective" and his four volume reference "The Encyclopedia of Public Health" which he compiled, edited and contributed to. The encyclopedia contains more than 900 articles contributed by experts in the field. The encyclopedia received the CHOICE 2002 award for Outstanding Academic Reference Title and has been listed in the Booklist/Reference Book Bulletin Editor's Choice of Outstanding Reference titles . . . but the crucial and most important question to Breslow ("How do we keep people healthy and out of the hospital?") was answered by him and seemingly rejected by the academic world, the medical establishment and is today almost unknown in popular culture. An online researcher typing the search "seven rules of health" and "Breslow" would come up empty. Searching for "Seven Golden Rules of Health" and "Rajjpuut," however, would turn up numerous hits, that’s how strongly the Ol’ Boy has been working to spread this all-important truth, and that's how well Dr. Breslow's original research has been ignored.  

The pity is that this truly great man's greatest contribution goes completely unheralded. If it weren't for Rajjpuut’s articles in the 70's, 80's and early 90's and blogging,  almost no one today would know about Dr. Breslow's research discovery of the seven golden rules of health. How can the press and the world of science and medicine totally ignore validated research that promises all of us an extra thirty-five years of high quality life?"

Rajjpuut, Evangelist for the Seven Golden Rules

Originally a staff writer for the Kansas BC and BS plan, Rajjpuut suggested back in 1975, that it was a "grave oversight" for the largest health insurer in the state NOT to have a program to keep people healthy and free of the medical system. A year later he then designed a Program to Lower Use of Services (PLUS)and a three-pronged approach to make it work. Then Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas plan president Bud Jones agreed and made Rajjpuut, the first PLUS department head. The seven golden rules of health played a great part in Jones’ approval of PLUS. And they should play a great part in your life as well.

Item #6 in the seven golden rules of health pantheon, "Drink alcohol in extreme moderation only" has presented a repeated teaching moment for Rajjpuut. While the moderation referred to in the original study was along the lines of  "at most" a beer or single glass of wine a day, Rajjpuut noted that in the original study those who drank very moderately fared better than those who abstained totally. In his blogs on the matter, Rajjpuut made it very clear that this was one area he regarded as a potential weakness of the study.

"The trouble with including all tea-totallers indiscriminately is that you also allow reformed alcoholics into the mix. Presumably adding such people (who may have already suffered greatly deteriorated health from their earlier alcoholic experiences) into the category "non-drinkers" would tend to skew the statistics toward people who drink but only ultra-moderately and away from those who NOW don't drink at all."  He suggested that a separate study be done of vigorous non-drinking, never-have-drunk "Mormons, for example, since the state of Utah is the one where a researcher is most likely to find many people who embrace the concepts of the seven golden rules of health." The Mormon "WOW" or "Word of Wisdom" is one of the longer religious documents in the world that "pays great attention to lifestyle," he said.

Rajjpuut expounded that "if ultra-light drinkers actually do prove to be longer-lived than non-drinking, never-have-drunk people" the result might have to do with "a certain ease in sociability versus the up-tightness often found in extremely pious churchgoers." He then suggested adding a "Rule 6 ^7/8 "cultivate a good sense of humor and be able to laugh at yourself and your affairs" as helpful in one’s lifestyle repertoire. "But if, as suspected, non-drinkers (not including ex-alcoholics) and ultra-light drinkers have virtually the same lifespans . . . then we'll finally have narrowed down the full and accurate truth on our beloved seven golden rules."

During the controversial run up in 2009 to so-called "Obamacare" initiative by Democrats in the House and Senate, Rajjpuut's Folly was often hyper-critical of virtually everything done by all the politicians involved especially those on the left. He was also a strong critic of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and called them "one of the leading causes of Americans' poor health” and implicated the agency in numerous iatrogenic deaths, illnesses and injuries and said that if the president was sincerely interested in increasing the quality of health care in America the first step was to abolish the FDA which Rajjpuut held responsible for "a huge percentage of the nation's iatrogenic deaths" the third leading cause of death across the nation. Rajjpuut instead suggested that inundating the American populace with information about the benefits of adopting the Seven Golden Rules of Health would pay many more benefits at virtually no cost.

In the health arena Rajjpuut has always returned to the theme of the seven golden rules. He has recently written a series of 16 blogs condemning the FDA and another of 27 called “A Better Health Care Alternative.” He unveiled “43 crucial concerns for reforming health care in the United States and claimed that Obamacare only mentioned one of these concerns, “high infant mortality, but of course they missed the key elements about infant mortality completely because the facts did not fit in with their agenda.”

Rajjpuut espoused the controversial idea that the backward steps in America's infant mortality undergone in the United States between 1960 and 2009 were associated with not following the Seven Golden Rules; and that the lifestyle espoused by radical feminism including freedom to experiment with and even embrace previously discouraged (for girls and women) lifestyle areas like alcohol usage, drugs, and cigarette smoking in the name of women’s emancipation; and most emphatically that the notion that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” added to the other two factors means a much higher percentage of divorce, young children raised in poverty, unwed mothers, teen pregnancies, and single-parent (mother-only homes) which were not the optimum places for very young children or their mothers. Besides the obviously higher potential for neglect with only one parent to nurture and watch over a young child, in such families, Rajjpuut said, later in the life of the mother, diabetes and pre-diabetes were much more likely than in double-parent homes and this would adversely impact future children’s early-life health. Many women's lifestyle and the Seven Golden Rules of Health have been negatively affected by the drastic shift in the nature of the family between 1960 to 2009 in his view.

The Rajjpuut Health Care Plan: Part I

Honest, Fair, Emphasizes Responsibility,

Prevention and Health Education

Only having two days to create a health care plan compared to the roughly 7 ½ months which President Obama has had does NOT make it difficult to create a better plan, not at all, almost anything thrown together would outperform the president’s ridiculous package. However, for Rajjpuut as a serious health educator, creating a virtually perfect plan is demanding. Hence this revision to the introductory material was required: unwittingly leaving out the HMO’s etc. in the original version has now been corrected.

            Any cataloging of the problems with the Obama health care insurance plan (not to mention all the other ignorant moves into the private sector we’ve seen in the last five months) would take too long to be worth the wait. We will instead replace the Obama plan with something workable and far fairer, more honest, effective, and taxpayer accountable that will not mortgage the nation’s future.  This first blog will outline the background necessary for success in this crucial endeavor. The second blog will present the actual plan.

Before dismissing Obama’s plan, let’s simplify things and in our description of his offering . . . say merely, it’s A. Unfair in that it will cost future taxpayers and young taxpayers today markedly more than it does the already aged; and it will eliminate the health care insurance industry as we know it B. Encourages health care dependency (rather than personal health responsibility) which will lead to out of control costs further hurting future taxpayers and today’s younger ones C. Dishonest: claiming to be an adjunct to the present system rather than driving it out of business D. Does nothing to control future costs by requiring the pharmaceutical industry to be honest and to attack disease rather than temporarily alleviating symptoms E. Does not address deficiencies in the AMA and the FDA which have brought us to the point F. Does not address the way doctors practice medicine in this country (50 patients in a single day? Quite unlike the European model) G. Does not address prevention.

Before presenting Rajjpuut’s plan, the natural question that needs asking is what qualifies the presenter to present a better national health care insurance plan than Mr. Obama has created. In a word: everything. To wit: Rajjpuut is a health care expert, Mr. Obama is merely charismatic. Let me explain:

A.  

 The problem is first of all a matter of free market economics. Mr. Obama has never read the essay “I, Pencil,” nor Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in one lesson (both available for free online), nor does Mr. Obama show any respect nor understanding of the capitalistic economic system, obviously preferring Communism or semi-communistic Socialism. I plead “Guilty!” on all three counts.
Grade on this: 

Obama:  F Rajjpuut: A.

B.  

The Specialized nature of the challenge requires someone who understands health care and health insurance. Obama is a smoker who has no prior education, nor experience in either the health industry or the health insurance industry, or at controlling health care costs. Rajjpuut is a health educator, has run three marathons, smoked only briefly, drinks three or four alcoholic beverages a month and his “biological age” tests out as 20+ years younger than his real age.   Rajjpuut worked for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas and while there created PLUS and then ran PLUS:  a three-pronged program to keep Kansans healthy; and control costs by eliminating unnecessary doctor, hospital and emergency room visits and by educating Kansans to take responsibility for their own health.
Grade on this:

Obama:  F+ Rajjpuut:  A.

C. This challenge also requires someone who is free of pre-conceived ideology who will merely search for the most practical and effective plan possible. Mr. Obama already has indicated he “knows best” which directions to move the country in. In medicine there is a famous and vital caveat which applies to ignoramuses who jump right in without first understanding the problem, or lack thereof: “First do no harm!” a.k.a. the Hippocratic Oath. By stepping in to his present post totally ignorant of economics, American history, automobile manufacturing, environmental statistics, and health and the health care insurance industry and then rather than surrounding himself with experts, immediately attacking by stepping in and throwing money and government FORCE into each situation as if that were where the best answers lie, Mr. Obama has proven himself a QUACK of the worst sort willing to experiment wildly upon the patients he treats, rather than just giving them sugar pills.
Grade on this: 

Obama: 0 (F---) Rajjpuut: A+++

Having proven the president eminently DISqualified and Rajjpuut the right (pun intended) man for the job, let's look first of all at some of the necessary questions to be considered before getting down to “brass tacks”: 

Q: Who should NOT be covered by a national health care insurance system? A: Those who are NOT American citizens. That means foreigners, people on visas, with green cards, and illegal immigrants are not covered regardless of the nature of their medical needs. They are allowed in only after posting a $500,000 bond for coverage of medical emergencies while in the country. AMEN

Q: Should we scrap the present private system of health care insurance? A: No, but since the backing for the system comes from the government, there’s NO need for a huge reserve (typically 150% of the amount covered by medical treatments and medicines), so perhaps 25% reserve will suffice. I leave that decision to accountants and cost-analyzers. 

Q: What are the main problems with the present system?  Where do major problems lie?  The problems are associated with but NOT limited to . . .

A. No real emphasis on prevention 

B. No real emphasis on personal responsibility for one’s own health  

C. No real emphasis on health education in kindergarten or the first ten grades.

D. Dependency is the great weakness of most Government Spending Boondoggles.  Patient independence is the cornerstone of the Rajjpuut Health Care Initiative.

E. Quality of life is paramount. Life pushing a walker while dragging an oxygen canister about is life, but just. Life in a nursing home is life, but just. Vitality and mobility are crucial.

F. HMO’s typically are considered to be a force in keeping prices low. They are, however,  a negative force in keeping health care quality low. Typically, doctors enrolled in HMO plans are given a “quota,” a minimum number of patients they’re to see each hour. Obviously, the limits the ability of caring physicians to deal properly with the all important matters of prevention; truly getting to know the patient and his problems and strengths; and instilling in the patient the urge and desire to be more responsible for his own health status. The HMO’s are also typically guilty of holding an “excessive referrals” requirement over doctor’s heads. In point of fact, that can interfere with doctors dealing out the best possible care for their patients. In the Rajjpuut Plan, HMO’s are probably not necessary unless they too get with the program and honor prevention, patient responsibility and a higher standard of care.

G. Pharmaceutical companies who earn great profits mistreating people (see cholesterol “LIE” and acid reflux disease below) and for treating people with dangerous drugs (you are ten times more likely to enter a hospital because of a negative drug reaction than you are from an auto accident) and for conning people into becoming “life-time subscribers of expensive drugs that mask or alleviate their symptoms but which will NOT cure them of anything – said drugs, bringing with them a whole slew of unnecessary and dangerous side effects.

H. The FDA is another agency which is causing more harm than good . . . the FDA which has not kept our food processing methodology free of salmonella, e. coli, etc.; the FDA which now allows drug companies to control how long the approval testing process takes by collecting legal “bribes” from them; the FDA whose employee rolls are dominated by castoffs from the very companies it monitors; the FDA which despite the experiences of Captain Cook with Scurvy and the Nobel Prize awarded to Linus Pauling and the recent Nobel-winning work of Louis J. Ignarro had the temerity to issue a statement that “no supplement of any sort has ever been proven effective in fighting any disease” and which has made life for vitamin and nutrient entrepreneurs in America quite miserable.  

Just a bit over a century ago Upton Sinclair wrote his monumental expose, “The Jungle.” The Jungle was nominally a novel, but really just an intriguing catalog and description of the corruptions and horrific willful sanitation atrocities found in the American meat-packing industry in 1906. The FDA was created in 1906 and performed wonders in cleaning up this disgraceful situation. Somewhere along the way the FDA badly lost its way.

I. About that same time, a recently incorporated group (1897), the AMA, was in the forefront of confronting quackery in medical treatment and fraudulent patent medicines. However, today’s AMA is an organization more interested in doctor’s having boats and second and third homes than it is in providing the best medicine for patients and in keeping patients out of the doctors’ offices and hospitals and hospital emergency rooms. The gravest failing of the doctors themselves is their being seemingly “in bed with” the pharmaceutical industry and more interested in prescribing life-long drug subscriptions than in actually preventing or curing anything. 

The AMA somewhere along the way stopped being concerned with the good of patients and became obsessed with the political power within its hands. Today the AMA is the ongoing Spanish Inquisition of the 20th and 21st Century. They define orthodox medicine and they define heresy. They willfully ignore any research that contradicts current AMA edicts, for example virtually anything coming from Japan and Europe. They perpetually side with the most invasive, most expensive and least effective medical procedures and the most expensive drugs with the most side-effects. For example, the AMA has been backing cholesterol reduction as the be-all, end-all for heart attack prevention for over 40 years even though less than 47% of the people who die from heart attacks have high cholesterol. 47%!!!! That's not "cause and effect," that's less than a coin-flip. But they, in league with our unaccountable pharmaceutical companies, have pushed these dangerous concoctions despite knowledge that a "high-cholesterol/heart attack link is a MYTH pure and simple. As a young health educator I knew these things back in 1976 and so did the AMA. When it comes to prevention, however, the AMA as it is run today, is a criminal organization.

robertringer.com/status-quo.html

The AMA created a list of about 60 diseases which they say are caused by problems with the body's immune systems and called them all "auto-immune diseases" which means they are all in a practical sense considered incurable by American doctors. Again we set up the patient to A. not be cured B. told he/she must subscribe to a lifetime regimen with very dangerous and expensive drugs. The most well known of these include Crohn’s Disease, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, AIDS and Diabetes Mellitus type I. European medical practice is not nearly so strong on calling any disease “incurable” or even “auto-immune” in origin, for that matter. The amount of money thrown away on patient “lifetime subscriptions” to questionable medicines that will NOT cure them but only enrich doctors and drug companies every day is staggering. And remember, these are “lifetime” subscriptions.

Medicine is a science, or should be, with a bit of art thrown in. The AMA, however, much like the Church in condemning Galileo, believes its authority is the final say. The scientific method starts with asking the right questions and pursuing them wherever they lead, not with relying on anyone's authority, least of all a hidebound entity like the AMA. Despite efforts in Europe and here in the United States to examine these diseases more scientifically, the AMA clings to auto-immunity as the final word. Looking at MS as an example of what I mean by science and first asking the right questions:

forum.neurologychannel.com/hc-forum/multiple-sclerosis_peer-to-peer_f128/-questions-i-ran-across_

J.      Doctors themselves have much to say about the quality of care. Their tendency to see huge amounts of patients every day (leaving them to molder in one of the four waiting rooms) and treat symptoms willy-nilly without actually knowing what is wrong and the tendency to think in terms of disease rather than patient health and PREVENTION (as they do in Europe’s more holistic medical climate) is all very dangerous to the patient, his pocket book and to every taxpayer’s bank account. For example, harried and rushed doctors and their random administration of antibiotics (even for viruses which do NOT respond to antibiotics) and random prescribing of anti-acid reflux medicines (90% of the time problem heartburn is a result of too LITTLE stomach acid, NOT too much) -- these two acts in combination: have created an epidemic of a dangerous dysentery called c. dificile) that is often life-threatening.  So seeing fewer patients and doing a better job with each one and teaching prevention to each one:  if doctor’s have to invest their money wisely to afford a boat rather than earning it from seeing 70% too many patients, so be it. The AMA and American doctors need to wake up now. They need to immediately become part of the solution rather than acting overtly as one of the major obstacles creating the problem. And one of the best things about my plan is they will only have two choices: become excellent doctors or quit. 

These ten areas are where the major problems and solutions lie . . . unlike the President, Rajjpuut does not believe there is an emergency in the delivery system requiring instantaneous action. Rajjpuut’s plan would be phased in over three years for two reasons . . . to make the transition between the present system and the new one relatively seamless and painless; and to be fair to all those who are not already playing the prevention game. See ya’all tomorrow!

Ya’all  live long, strong and ornery,

Bob

References:

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2009/05/24/add_35_quality_years_to_your_lifespan.thtml

http://www.robertringer.com/status-quo.html

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/i-pencil/

http://jim.com/econ/chap01p1.html

http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

http:www.forum.neurologychannel.com/hc-forum/multiple-sclerosis_peer-to-peer_f128/-questions-i-ran-across

Dependency is the Weakness of most Government Spending Boondoggles

The Rajjpuut Health Care Plan: Part I

Honest, Fair, Emphasizes Responsibilities

            Any cataloging of the problems with the Obama health care insurance plan (not to mention all the other ignorant moves into the private sector we’ve seen in the last five months) would take too long to be worth the wait. We will instead replace the Obama plan with something workable and far fairer, more honest, effective, and taxpayer accountable that will not mortgage the nation’s future.  This first blog will outline the background necessary for success in this crucial endeavor. The second blog will present the actual plan.

Before dismissing Obama’s plan, let’s simplify things and in our description of his offering . . . say merely, it’s A. Unfair in that it will cost future taxpayers and young taxpayers today markedly more than it does the already aged; and it will eliminate the health care insurance industry as we know it B. Encourages health care dependency (rather than personal health responsibility) which will lead to out of control costs further hurting future taxpayers and today’s younger ones C. Dishonest: claiming to be an adjunct to the present system rather than driving it out of business D. Does nothing to control future costs by requiring the pharmaceutical industry to be honest and to attack disease rather than temporarily alleviating symptoms E. Does not address deficiencies in the AMA and the FDA which have brought us to the point F. Does not address prevention.

Before presenting my own plan, the natural question that needs asking is what qualifies me to present a better national health care insurance plan than Mr. Obama has created. In a word: everything. To wit: I am an expert, Mr. Obama is merely charismatic. Let me explain:

A.  

B.  

Obama:  F+ Rajjpuut:  A.

First of all here are some of the necessary questions to be considered before getting down to “brass tacks”: 

Q: Who should NOT be covered by a national health care insurance system? A: Those who are NOT American citizens. That means foreigners, people on visas, with green cards, and illegal immigrants are not covered regardless of the nature of their medical needs. They are allowed in only after posting a $500,000 bond for coverage of medical emergencies while in the country. AMEN

Q: Should we scrap the present private system of health care insurance? A: No, but since the backing for the system comes from the government, there’s NO need for a huge reserve (typically 150% of the amount covered by medical treatments and medicines), so perhaps 25% reserve will suffice. I leave that decision to accountants and cost-analyzers. 

Q: What are the main problems with the present system?  Where do major problems lie?  The problems are associated with but NOT limited to . . .

A. No real emphasis on prevention 

B. No real emphasis on personal responsibility for one’s own health  

C. No real emphasis on health education in kindergarten or the first ten grades.

D. Pharmaceutical companies who earn great profits mistreating people (see cholesterol “LIE” and acid reflux disease below) and for treating people with dangerous drugs (you are ten times more likely to enter a hospital because of a negative drug reaction than you are from an auto accident) and for conning people into becoming “life-time subscribers of expensive drugs that mask or alleviate their symptoms but which will NOT cure them of anything – said drugs, bringing with them a whole slew of unnecessary and dangerous side effects.

E. The FDA is another agency which is causing more harm than good . . . the FDA which has not kept our food processing methodology free of salmonella, e. coli, etc.; the FDA which now allows drug companies to control how long the approval testing process takes by collecting legal “bribes” from them; the FDA whose employee rolls are dominated by castoffs from the very companies it monitors; the FDA which despite the experiences of Captain Cook with Scurvy and the Nobel Prize awarded to Linus Pauling and the recent Nobel-winning work of Louis J. Ignarro had the temerity to issue a statement that “no supplement of any sort has ever been proven effective in fighting any disease” and which has made life for vitamin and nutrient entrepreneurs in America quite miserable.  

Just a bit over a century ago Upton Sinclair wrote his monumental expose, “The Jungle.” The Jungle was nominally a novel, but really just an intriguing catalog and description of the corruptions and horrific willful sanitation atrocities found in the American meat-packing industry in 1906. The FDA was created in 1906 and performed wonders in cleaning up this disgraceful situation. Somewhere along the way the FDA badly lost its way.

F. About that same time, a recently incorporated group (1897), the AMA, was in the forefront of confronting quackery in medical treatment and fraudulent patent medicines. However, today’s AMA is an organization more interested in doctor’s having boats and second and third homes than it is in providing the best medicine for patients and in keeping patients out of the doctors’ offices and hospitals and hospital emergency rooms. The gravest failing of the doctors themselves is their being seemingly “in bed with” the pharmaceutical industry and more interested in prescribing life-long drug subscriptions than in actually preventing or curing anything. 

The AMA somewhere along the way stopped being concerned with the good of patients and became obsessed with the political power within its hands. Today the AMA is the ongoing Spanish Inquisition of the 20th and 21st Century. They define orthodox medicine and they define heresy. They willfully ignore any research that contradicts current AMA edicts, for example virtually anything coming from Japan and Europe. They perpetually side with the most invasive, most expensive and least effective medical procedures and the most expensive drugs with the most side-effects. For example, the AMA has been backing cholesterol reduction as the be-all, end-all for heart attack prevention for over 40 years even though less than 47% of the people who die from heart attacks have high cholesterol. 47%!!!! That's not "cause and effect," that's less than a coin-flip. But they, in league with our unaccountable pharmaceutical companies, have pushed these dangerous concoctions despite knowledge that a "high-cholesterol/heart attack link is a MYTH pure and simple. As a young health educator I knew these things back in 1976 and so did the AMA. When it comes to prevention, however, the AMA as it is run today, is a criminal organization.

robertringer.com/status-quo.html

The AMA created a list of about 60 diseases which they say are caused by problems with the body's immune systems and called them all "auto-immune diseases" which means they are all in a practical sense considered incurable by American doctors. Again we set up the patient to A. not be cured B. told he/she must subscribe to a lifetime regimen with very dangerous and expensive drugs. The most well known of these include Crohn’s Disease, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, AIDS and Diabetes Mellitus type I. European medical practice is not nearly so strong on calling any disease “incurable” or even “auto-immune” in origin, for that matter. The amount of money thrown away on patient “lifetime subscriptions” to questionable medicines that will NOT cure them but only enrich doctors and drug companies every day is staggering. And remember, these are “lifetime” subscriptions.

Medicine is a science, or should be, with a bit of art thrown in. The AMA, however, much like the Church in condemning Galileo, believes its authority is the final say. The scientific method starts with asking the right questions and pursuing them wherever they lead, not with relying on anyone's authority, least of all a hidebound entity like the AMA. Despite efforts in Europe and here in the United States to examine these diseases more scientifically, the AMA clings to auto-immunity as the final word. Looking at MS as an example of what I mean by science and first asking the right questions:

forum.neurologychannel.com/hc-forum/multiple-sclerosis_peer-to-peer_f128/-questions-i-ran-across_

The doctors themselves have much to say about the quality of care. Their tendency to see huge amounts of patients every day (leaving them to moulder in one of the four waiting rooms) and treat symptoms willy-nilly without actually knowing what is wrong and the tendency to think in terms of disease rather than patient health and PREVENTION (as they do in Europe’s more holistic medical climate) is all very dangerous to the patient, his pocket book and to every taxpayer’s bank account. For example, harried and rushed doctors and their random administration of antibiotics (even for viruses which do NOT respond to antibiotics) and random prescribing of anti-acid reflux medicines (90% of the time problem heartburn is a result of too LITTLE stomach acid, NOT too much) -- these two acts in combination: have created an epidemic of a dangerous dysentery called c. dificile) that is often life-threatening.  So seeing fewer patients and doing a better job with each one and teaching prevention to each one:  if doctor’s have to invest their money wisely to afford a boat rather than earning it from seeing 70% too many patients, so be it. The AMA and American doctors need to wake up now. They need to immediately become part of the solution rather than acting overtly as one of the major obstacles creating the problem. And one of the best things about my plan is they will only have two choices: become excellent doctors or quit. This area and the other five are where the major problems and solutions lie . . . .

Ya’all  live long, strong and ornery,

Bob

References:

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2009/05/24/add_35_quality_years_to_your_lifespan.thtml

http://www.robertringer.com/status-quo.html

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/i-pencil/

http://jim.com/econ/chap01p1.html

http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

http:www.forum.neurologychannel.com/hc-forum/multiple-sclerosis_peer-to-peer_f128/-questions-i-ran-across_