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by Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D.
ur health care system is
on the verge of a financial
meltdown. In 2002,
health care spending in
the United States was
$1.55 trillion, accounting for an enormous
15 percent of the nation’s economy; the
average amount spent on each American
for health care was $5,440 (Time magazine,
January 19, 2004).
For some of you, the cost of health
insurance and uncovered medical costs
may be as much as your entire income.
Even for the wealthy among us, it can be a
major expense. Not only does the cost of
health insurance come out of our paycheck
(even if your employer pays for it, be
assured that it is still coming out of your
paycheck!), but it also gets added to the
cost of almost everything you pay for. As
health care costs continue to skyrocket,
going up approximately 9.3 percent in
2002 (the largest increase in 11 years),
fewer employers are able and willing to
cover the cost of health insurance and
more Americans are uninsured.
Our approach to treating people is also
becoming more expensive and toxic—and
sadly, not always that much more effective.
Despite spending more than any other
country on health care, overall health
rankings do not put the United States
among even the top 10 countries. As a
physician, the causes of skyrocketing
health care costs have been pretty obvious.
In this article we will discuss how we got
into this mess. More importantly, we will
discuss how to fix it. We can actually get
much better care and have the freedom to
choose what kind of care we want, for
much less than we’re paying now.
So how did we get into this mess?
Imagine what would happen if we took the
same approach to cars as we did to health
care. We all felt that having the best possible
car was an absolute right and we
should not have to pay for it. Everyone
should get the best car possible, should
have no idea what it cost, and should be
under the misimpression that someone
else was paying for it. In addition, there
would be only one car building company, who had managed to make it illegal for any
other companies to start up. Because of
this, the company could charge whatever
they wanted without significant competition.
This might sound like fun, but your
car would cost you more than your
house—and might not be any better than
the one you’re driving now.
It would be more effective if we simply
recognized that there are many things that
we all need to exist, including food,
shelter, education and health care. It is
obvious that as a society, we cannot buy
every one a mansion or a Ph.D., but may
agree that everyone should have a right to
certain basic levels of these services. If not,
why should everyone have a right to health
care but not to food and shelter? We would
then budget a certain amount for each of
these, determine where we get the most
benefit for the money, and do competitive
bidding to get the most “bang for the
buck” (which is what we do for everything
except health care). Just like with housing
and food, individuals could then pay for or
buy private insurance for services that are
not covered.
It is also important to be aware that
medical fashion (called “standard of practice”)
is based more on what is new and
expensive than on what is scientifically
shown to be the best. As a physician, this
came as a shock to me. But think about it.
Who pays to get information to doctors
and their patients through the media?
Pharmaceutical companies make massive amounts of campaign contributions. These
might also be known as bribes, if we look at
it realistically. By the way, just like a judge
has to excuse himself from any case where he
has a conflict of interest, wouldn’t it be nice
if politicians also had to excuse themselves
and could not vote on issues where they got
contributions?
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Our health care system is on the verge of a financial meltdown. In 2002, health care spending
in the United States was $1.55 trillion, accounting for an enormous 15 percent of the nation’s
economy; the average amount spent on each American for health care was $5,440.
(Time magazine, January 19, 2004). |
In addition, drug companies spend
about as much on advertising/promotion as
they do on developing new drugs. Because
of this, journals and medical conferences
(and drug sales reps) focus predominantly
on medications that are expensive. In addition,
makers of natural remedies cannot
legally make any claims that natural products
are effective in treating an illness, no
matter how good the scientific data is supporting
its use. To do so, they would have to
go through the FDA approval process, which
costs an estimated $400-800 million per
remedy. As natural products cannot be effectively
patented, vitamin companies can
never charge the high prices that drugs cost,
and therefore cannot make up the $400 plus
million cost.
Without companies being able to legally
promote natural remedies, and with conservative
(and although well-meaning, turf
protective) elements in the medical practice
having a near monopoly on deciding what
treatments are covered by insurance or even
legally available to people, it’s not surprising
that health care is becoming unaffordable
and dangerous. Well over 100,000
Americans die each year from drug side
effects.
So how do we fix the problem?
1. Put you, the patient/consumer, in charge
of finding the best deal.
When you buy a house, car, or anything
else, you shop for the best value for your
needs. That’s why we all have different cars.
Health care can be the same. I recommend
that health insurance be for catastrophic
care and some basic preventive items. By
having a high deductible (e.g. $2500), insurance
companies and health care providers
will not have to spend as much on paperwork/
administrative costs for the smaller
things. The insurance company can still
negotiate discounts for us (which often
would account for significant savings on the
cost of tests, etc.), but we would pay for
these things directly at the time of service.
With the high deductible and other recommendations
we are making here, the cost of
insurance would drop markedly.
This cost difference, which would likely
be approximately $1500 per year, would go
into a medical savings account (MSA) that
belongs to you. You could then decide what
health care you want to use, seeing your chiropractor,
naturopath, buying supplements,
etc. This MSA plan is currently available now
to those who are self-employed. I have one
and it’s wonderful. I do not have to argue
with the insurance company about what is
covered, I get the discounts they’ve negotiated,
there’s minimal paperwork, and I can
choose whatever treatment I prefer. The
money to pay for these things comes out of
my medical savings account, and I can carry
over the unused parts from year to year. I
can use it for other family members (unlike
the current “use it or lose it” approach of
some government policies which force
people to spend everything that is left in the
account at year’s end or it’s gone).
Because the money comes out of your
account (even though it was put
there by your employer as part of
your health insurance benefit), people will
shop around and decide what they really
need instead of automatically doing whatever
the doctor says without asking why. You
might decide to spend $400 seeing your chiropractor
(or use the treatment we discuss
below) for your back pain instead of
spending $1200 for an MRI. Especially if you
are aware of the data that shows that most of
the “disc” findings on MRI never cause any
problems and radiologists can’t really pick
out the MRIs of those with back pain from
those without. The MRI often simply results
in unnecessary back surgery (at a cost of over
$15,000—CaChing!). It is best saved for
when conservative measures fail, or for when
there is evidence of neurological damage.
2. Do realistic research on what tests and treatments
really give the most bang for the buck—and have those paid for first.
We currently will spend hundreds of thousands
of dollars on long shot treatments on
one person that may have a minimal chance
of success. We do this despite allowing thousands
of children to die of malnutrition or
lack of basic services that are inexpensive.
For example, the WIC (Women Infants and
Children) program for pregnant mothers in
poverty has been one of the most successful
programs in medical history and is underfunded
because it is not glamorous.
To give another example, thousands of
American’s die each year (and many thousands
more Americans have infertility, miscarriages
and learning disorders) simply
because doctors do not adequately diagnose
OR treat hypothyroidism—at a cost of
under $200 a year. Simply giving optimal
nutritional support during pregnancy is
cheap and would also save enormous
amounts. In addition, for those with infertility
without structural problems, natural
remedies can often effectively treat infertility
for under $100–$200 instead of
$20,000–$40,000 for in vitro fertilization.*
The insurers (and government agencies) can
make a budget that will decide how much
they will spend each year and then pick
those things that are cost effective to cover.
Although people complain that this is
rationing (which it is), we are now
“rationing” in a highly ineffective manner
by simply having no care be available for an
ever increasing number of people.
3. Show the health insurance companies that natural therapies can save them billions of dollars.
Although you may feel like it when you
submit a claim, health insurers are not the
enemy. They are also hemorrhaging dollars
with skyrocketing health care costs. If we
can show them with good science that
Comprehensive Medicine (the next generation
of medicine after Integrative Medicine)
can save them massive sums, they may put
their political clout behind your having
access to natural remedies, and maybe even
pay for some of it. Now, M.D.s that are on
their payroll and are usually hostile to natural
remedies that they think are all
quackery, decide what is paid for. The
insurers try to say that all natural therapies
(and many allopathic ones as well), are
experimental/unproven in a desperate
attempt to stem the flow of payments.
Unfortunately, this simply pushes people to
more testing and ineffective therapies,
resulting in increased costs with less benefit.
As an example, the average chronic fatigue
syndrome/fibromyalgia patient spends
$50,000 on ineffective testing and treatment
before finding a doctor who is trained in
effective therapies.** Instead of saving
money and lives by paying for these effective
therapies, some insurance companies continue
to shoot themselves (and you) in the
foot by not covering treatment. As an aside,
with the medical savings account approach
above, you decide what treatment to get and
the insurance company doesn’t have to play
the bad guy. I propose three simple, straightforward and
relatively inexpensive studies to encourage
health insurers to look into cost savings
through natural remedies:
1. Disc disease. Two studies (one placebocontrolled)
with over a thousand patients
show that back pain/sciatica from disc disease
can be eliminated over 70 percent of the
time simply by giving colchicine (an old,
herbally derived gout medicine) intravenously
once a week for six weeks. Using
this approach, I almost never have to send
people for back surgery. My colleagues who
use it have had the same results.
Conservatively, disc/back surgery costs
$15,000. The IV colchicine is cheap ($18
total for the six doses). The main cost is
starting the IV at $60. Cost for treatment is
$500 vs. $15,000 plus. If one guesses that
there are 300,000 disc surgeries a year (I have
not been able to get the exact numbers), this
represents a savings of over $4 billion yearly
for this treatment alone.
2. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. This
common problem is associated with a
pinched nerve in the wrist. People get pain
and numbness in their hands and often
wake with these symptoms in the middle of
the night—feeling like they have to shake
their hands around. The usual medical
approach is to do a nerve conduction study
and surgery (cost $2600). Unless the person
continues to do activities which cause
“repetitive stress injury” to the wrist /hand,
the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome
usually resolve within six to 12 weeks by
combining the following measures (which
can cost less than $100):
A. Taking 250 mg of vitamin B6 a day
B. Taking Armour thyroid at the dose that feels best while keeping the Free T4 blood test within the normal limits (even if your thyroid blood tests are normal), and
C. Wearing a “cock up” wrist splint(s), (one that keeps the hand/wrist in a neutral position, which is the position your hand is in when holding a glass of water) at night while you're sleeping. If symptoms bother you during the day, it is also helpful to wear the splint during the day. For every one million of these surgeries that can be avoided, we save $2 billion. In the few cases where these inexpensive measures fail, one can always still do surgery later.
3. Autism. Both the emotional and financial costs of this condition are enormous. The prevalence of autism is skyrocketing, now affecting as many as one in 500 Americans. Patients with autism can improve, however, using nutritional/enzyme support combined with desensitization using an acupressure technique called NAET (Nambudripads Allergy Elimination Techniques, see www.NAET.com). We feel that this approach is so promising, and the need for effective treatment for autism so important, that my wife and I have given a $100,000 grant from our foundation to the NARF (the research foundation of NAET). If you have a child who has moderately severe autism, is under eight years old and you would like them to be part of the study, please e-mail me with your phone number at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
and also to request more information.
Our health care system has run amok,
resulting in very expensive, toxic and often
minimally effective therapies. I have offered
some ideas on how to fix it, making it safer,
cheaper and more effective—while still
giving you the opportunity to choose the
type of care that you prefer. There are many
other approaches which can be effective as
well. It's time for change!
* (For info/references on these go to www.Vitality101.com, click on “Useful articles” and then on the “hypothyroidism press release” or “natural treatments for infertility” or “how to have a healthy pregnancy”).
**see www.Vitality101.com to see a “gold standard” study showing a 91 percent improvement rate with proper treatment.
Jacob Teitelbaum M.D.
Dr. Teitelbaum is a board-certified internist
and director of the Annapolis Center for
Effective CFS/Fibromyalgia Therapies.
Having suffered with and overcome these
illnesses in 1975, he spent the next 25 years
creating, researching and teaching about
effective therapies. His office is in
Annapolis, Maryland, phone 410-573-5389.
He is the senior author of the landmark
study “Effective Treatment of Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia—a
Placebo-controlled Study.” He lectures
internationally. He is also the author of the
best-selling book From Fatigued to Fantastic!
and the just released Three Steps to
Happiness! Healing Through Joy. His Web
site can be found at: www.Vitality101.com.
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