Health care was needlessly expensive and inefficient before the ACA

Right after Obamacare was enacted in 2010, I wrote a column suggesting four principles that should guide and motivate supporters of free markets and limited government.

As part of that article, I pointed out that Obamacare wasn’t a dramatic change. Instead, it was just another layer of government imposed on a health system that already was burdened by a huge amount of intervention.

The way to think of Obamacare is that we are shifting from a healthcare system 68 percent controlled/directed by government to one that…is 79 percent controlled/directed by government. Those numbers are just vague estimates, to be sure, but they underscore why Obamacare is just a continuation of a terrible trend, not a profound paradigm shift.

Later that year, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity released a video that elaborated, pointing out that Obamacare simply made a system dominated by government into a system even more controlled by government.

With predictable bad results.

That video included two charts based on my back-of-the envelope calculation, and I shared them in a 2013 column that further discussed the incremental damage of Obamacare.

Our healthcare system as a mess before Obamacare. Normal market forces were crippled by government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and also undermined by government intervention in the tax code that resulted in pervasive over-insurance that exacerbated the third-party payer problem. These various forms of intervention led to all sorts of problems, such as rising prices and indecipherable complexity…Obamacare was enacted in 2010, and it was perceived to be a paradigm-shifting change in the healthcare system, even though it was just another layer of bad policy on top of lots of other bad policy. …Not surprisingly, all of the same problems still exist, but now they’re exacerbated by the mistakes in Obamacare.

In other words, we’re not going to fix the healthcare system by merely repealing Obamacare.

Yes, that’s a necessary step, but much more needs to happen.

Pre-Paid Health Care

Which is why I’m very happy that Prager University has a new video pointing out that health insurance doesn’t work nearly as well as car insurance and homeowners insurance. Why? Because it’s become an inefficient form of pre-paid health care rather than protection against large and unexpected expenses.

Amen. I’ve made a similar case on several occasions.

Though I wish the video went even further by explaining how the healthcare exclusion in the tax code encourages over-insurance.

And here’s a video from the Foundation for Economic Education that also explains how government intervention is distorting the health market.

Here’s the most important factoid from the video, which comes from the accompanying FEE article.

According to the Consumer Price Index and Medical-care price index from 1935 to 2009, the health care spending crisis didn’t start until the mid 1960s, around the same time when Medicare and Medicaid were signed into law, and at the same time that we began requiring doctors to go through all sorts of expensive licensing procedures beyond medical school. Since then, health care spending has doubled, even adjusted for inflation.

But let’s keep everything in perspective. Our system is needlessly expensive and inefficient because of government, but it still manages to deliver some decent outcomes.

By Bill Sardi

September 5, 2017

In striking contrasts, a university-based team just announced it has developed a five-dollar treatment that completely abolishes cancer in the same week news headlines hailed the Food & Drug Administration’s approval of a $475,000 immunotherapy treatment for blood cancer (leukemia).

I’m sure readers want to hear about the five-dollar cancer cure first.  A university-based team set out to develop a cancer cure that could be performed in third-world countries where incomes are low, equipment unavailable and even electricity non-existent.  What they came up with needs just a needle and a syringe and a steady hand.

It is called tumor ablation — the injection of ethanol (alcohol) directly into a solid tumor that causes tumor cells to dehydrate and die.  It has been successfully demonstrated in pancreatic, parathyroid, liver, adrenal and other tumors.  It requires no special equipment and was 100% effective at curing cancers in hamsters in the animal lab.  Its only drawback, escape of ethanol into surrounding healthy tissues, has been overcome by making an ethyl cellulose substance that is highly viscous and remains in place rather than spreading to healthy tissues.

Only a 3% ethyl cellulose concentration injected at a certain rate was determined to produce optimal effect.  The results were astounding.  Using conventional ethanol ablation, 4 of 12 tumors regressed completely by the 7^th day following treatment. The formed gel of ethanol cellulose reduced tumor volume to 13% versus 89% of their initial size with standard ethanol instillation.  Eight days following injection 7 of 7 tumors had completely regressed with ethanol cellulose gel whereas 0 of 5 regressed completely with standard ethanol.

Ethyl cellulose is currently approved by the US FDA as a food additive and costs less than 50-cents a gram.  Injection of 16-times less medicine (ethanol cellulose) versus plain ethanol completely abolished cancer.  Curious readers can view the astounding visual images of these complete cures published in a recent edition of Scientific Reports.

A commentator at the American Council on Science & Health website says “any technological advances that result from the team’s research will have applicability not only in the development world but to the develop one, as well.”  Will we ever see the day when this treatment is applied en mass?  Of course, major news sources buried the five-dollar cancer cure and extolled the half-million dollar one.

Meanwhile, the FDA has approved the first immunotherapy drug for childhood leukemia.  The treatment involves the drug Kymriah and will be confined to cases of unremitting acute lymphoblastic leukemia.  Kymriah, called the first “living drug,” genetically alters immune cells (T-cells) to fight the disease. About 600 patients develop this form of leukemia annually.  It can also be used for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma.  It mobilizes the body’s own immune system.

I’ve already explained how to mimic this T-cell therapy at a pittance of the cost of Kymriah.  The use of supplemental zinc to restore volume and function to the thymus gland that shrinks with advancing age is an overlooked form of immunotherapy.  Thymus gland extract, available in health shops, is also available.  It would cost less than $100 to purchase zinc and other vitamins to rejuvenate the immune system.

Expensive as it is, how can anyone be any less than thrilled to hear of this cure.  However, T-cell therapy with Kymriah isn’t a complete cure for all.  It has an 83% remission rate.  It is likely to be more effective if the function of the thymus gland were restored.

What is needed are free markets in medicine

Someone once said the objective of American business is to do things “more, better and faster” than your competitors.  That was certainly true when it came to transistor radios, computer printers, handwriting instruments, and a plethora of other products and services.  But that isn’t the objective of American medicine.

While medical device and pharmaceutical companies have a right to capture the highest yield for their research and development investments, they don’t have the right to rig markets (buy up generic drugs when their drug patents expire), develop treatments that pander to doctors’ incomes (injection fees for $1000 injectable drugs rather than oral medications), promote newer drugs over better and safer older drugs, lobby Congress to avoid having to be price competitive in selling drugs to Medicare, and pretend they have high R&D costs that justify high-priced drugs and then gain fast FDA approval for their new medicines as orphan drugs for rare diseases and then turn them into billion dollar blockbuster drugs via off label prescription.

Shunned for decades, immunotherapy has become applied science.  Modern medicine is finally delivering real cures, but only on its own terms.

The Best of Bill Sardi

ORIGINAL STORY AT  http://knowledgeofhealth.com

The powers that be have gone to extreme lengths to try and censor this movie. You can rent it for the night for $3.99, or you can buy it, and loan it to your friends. Not everyone realizes the truth behind vaccines.  Is your “local”  paper warning you about these dangers?  Of course not…..   ~MFP

Watch VAXXED

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In Italy, millions of Italians have been demonstrating since June, protesting the infringements to parental rights.

On July 28, industry-beholden Italian legislators voted 296-92 to pass a one-size-fits-all law that mandates multiple doses of ten vaccines for preschoolers through teenagers, imposing steep fines for parents who do not comply…. Read More

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