Mike Barrett - New Bill to Mandate Flu Vaccine for New Jersey Health Care Workers

Thanks to a new bill currently going through New Jersey legislature, employees working at health care facilities such as general or special hospitals, nursing homes, or home health care agencies may be ‘mandatorily’ required to receive the flu vaccine. The bill, recently approved by the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee, may be voted on this week.

New Bill to Mandate Flu Vaccine for New Jersey Health Care Workers

Needless to say, this bill is not the first to call for mandatory flu vaccines. Previously, a federal advisory committee has called on hospitals and healthcare clinics to make the seasonal flu shot mandatory for all employees. What the advisory committee fails to mention is that there is a shocking lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of the flu vaccine — especially regarding certain healthcare workers in particular. The Cochrane Database Review, the gold standard within the evidence-based medical model for deciding the potency of common medical interventions, does not lend clear scientific support to the theory that flu vaccines are safe or effective.

Read More:

http://naturalsociety.com/new-bill-to-mandate-flu-vaccine-for-new-jersey-health-care-workers/

Fifty Medical Doctors for Single Payer Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Individual Mandate

Fifty medical doctors who favor a single payer health insurance system today urged the US Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate.

In a brief filed with the Court, the fifty doctors and two non-profit groups – Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy – said that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The individual mandate is the provision of the ACA that requires Americans to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies if they do not otherwise have coverage.

The doctors are challenging the government’s claim that the individual mandate is necessary to reach Congress’ goal of universal coverage.

Read More:

http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=3178

Medicine For Sale: Tracing the Shadowy Money Trail that Exploits your Health (Part 1)

By Gary Null, PhD and Jeremy Stillman

Each day, millions of Americans visit a physician. Whether they go to the office of a primary care physician, consult with a specialist or seek medical assistance at an outpatient clinic or hospital emergency room, in all cases, there is an underlying assumption that the quality of care they are given must be the best in the world because we spend nearly twice as much as any other country in the world on individual healthcare.   Also, we are led to believe by our physicians and nurses, the media and the many federal agencies that oversee the medical-industrial complex, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) that everything offered to patients is based upon scientifically proven therapies for safety and efficacy or science-based medicine.  

At the same time, we are told that any approaches to health involving non-science-based medicine is to be rejected; these include homeopathy, ayurvedic medicine, acupuncture, acupressure, massage, aromatherapy, magnet therapy, chiropractic medicine and supplementation with vitamins.  We are told that such modalities have no foundation in science and that they have an almost cult-like following.  Our health authorities make it clear that patients pursuing these alternative therapies have never made any improvements, in any circumstances, simply because they aren’t dealing with science-based medicine.  The medical establishment tells us that anyone who sees improvement in their health using a non-science-based therapy was either misdiagnosed in the first place or improved only because they were treated by some form of science-based medicine that they must have received before.  Hence, all practitioners of alternative medicine must be at best delusional, and at worse, out-and-out frauds and quacks who should be disgraced and imprisoned.  

This has been the existing medical paradigm for nearly a century.  Confronted with this situation, we ask a few basic questions: Is science-based medicine safe and effective?  If so, where is the proof? And if it is not safe and effective, where is the proof?  We also ask are alternative therapies are safe and effective? If they are, where is the proof? If they are not, where is the proof?  These are reasonable questions to ask.  

Then comes the great disconnect: our country will spend $2.6 trillion on medical care this year yet virtually nothing is spent on prevention and there is no condemnation of diet contributing to disease.  The only admonitions that we hear are “don’t smoke” and “drink in moderation.”  Any evidence demonstrating that a disease may stem from processed foods and beverages, environmental chemicals, stress, or a lack of exercise is either not discussed or downplayed.  As a result, the average American doesn’t pay a great deal of attention to what they feed themselves and their children; nor do they bother to devote much time in their daily lives to exercise or meditation.  

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Medical News Today - High Level Of Waste In Health Spending, Says Medicare And Medicaid Boss

Medical News Today, 05 Dec 2011

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/238654.php

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid until last Thursday, stated that up to 30% of spending on health is wasted with absolutely no benefit to beneficiaries (patients). He added that his agency's cumbersome and archaic regulations are partly to blame. He claims too many resources and too much time is dedicated to things that do not help patients one bit; something doctors are fully aware of too.

In an interview last Thursday, Dr. Berwick said:

"Much is done that does not help patients at all,
and many physicians know it."

During the interview, Berwick talked about the previous 17 months, while he was at the helm as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, his failures, successes and frustrations, and dealing with criticisms from Republican lawmakers.

Berwick's appointment, which was to expire at the end of 2011, was done in a way that drew criticisms from both sides of the House. President Barack Obama nominated him in April 2010, then there was an investigation regarding his qualifications, subsequently a temporary recess appointment was given to bypass Congress.

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Dr. Mercola - How Ghostwritten Medical Articles Can Impact Your Health

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/26/medical-journals-using-ghost-writers.aspx?e_cid=20111126_DNL_art_2

Unfortunately, the practice of employing ghostwriters can have very serious ramifications for your health. For example, an August 4, 2009 New York Times article reported how Wyeth Pharmaceutical Company used this ghostwriting practice to successfully peddle hormone replacement therapy in women. Physicians prescribed these drugs based on 26 studies published in the medical literature, affirming the benefits and downplaying the risks of hormone replacement. 
As a result, sales of Premarin and Prempro soared. 
However, all the papers turned out to have been written by ghostwriters hired by Wyeth, and many women have since sued the drug maker for health problems suffered from these drugs. 

• Wyeth-Ayerst—Redux. Wyeth paid $20,000 for an article on the "therapeutic effects" of their diet pill, Redux (dexfenfluramine). As detailed in the book Our Daily Meds, Dr. Richard Atkinson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin was to receive $1,500 in return for putting his name to the finished piece. An excerpt from Our Daily Meds reads:

"When the article was complete, Dr. Atkinson sent a letter to Excerpta, praising the ghostwriter's work. "Let me congratulate you and your writer on an excellent and thorough review of the literature, clearly written," the doctor wrote. "... Perhaps I can get you to write all my papers for me! My only general comment is that this piece may make dexfenfluramine sound better than it really is."

A year later, the drug was pulled from the market as doctors began reporting heart valve injuries in as many as one-third of patients taking the drug. Redux, Pondimin (a similar drug), and fen-phen (of which dexfenfluramine was a part) were later linked to dozens of deaths.

• Parke-Davis (acquired by Pfizer in 2004)—Neurontin. Parke-Davis contracted with a medical education communication company (MECC) to write articles in support of the drug to the tune of $13,000 to $18,000 per article. In turn, MECC paid $1,000 each to friendly physicians and pharmacists to sign off as authors of the articles, making the material appear independent.Last year, Pfizer was found guilty of violating U.S. racketeering laws by illegally promoting off-label uses of Neurontin, and were fined more than $142 million in damages. 
  Merck—Vioxx. This deadly drug, which was eventually blamed for some 60,000+ deaths, was also linked to a number of shameful scandals relating to fraudulent studies and the use of ghostwriters to boost sales. The New England Journal of Medicine admittedly published an erroneous and biased Vioxx study, and the Annals of Internal Medicine found itself in similar hot water when one of the "authors" of a 2003 Vioxx study confessed he had little to do with the research.

Wendell Potter - Does the U.S. Have the World's Best Health Care System? Yes, If You're Talking About the Third World

Published on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/29-6

by Wendell Potter

A little more than a year ago, on the day after the GOP regained control of the House of Representatives, Speaker-to-be John Boehner said one of the first orders of business after he took charge would be the repeal of health care reform.

"I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country," Boehner said at a press conference. "That means we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with common sense reforms to bring down the cost of health care."

Boehner is not the first nor the only Republican to try to make us believe that the U.S. has the world's best health care system and that we're bound to lose that distinction because of Obamacare. I've heard GOP candidates for president say the same thing in recent months, charging that we need to get rid of a President who clearly is trying to fix something that doesn't need fixing, something that isn't broken in the first place.

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Wendell Potter - The Health Care Industry's Stranglehold on Congress

Monday 21 November 2011

by: Wendell Potter, iWatch News [3] | Op-Ed

Special interests target the independent board that may be the last best hope for Medicare reform.

One of the reasons why Congress has been largely unable to make the American health care system more efficient and equitable is because of the stranglehold lobbyists for special interests have on the institution.

Whenever lawmakers consider any kind of meaningful reform, the proposed remedies inevitably create winners and losers. Physicians’ incomes most likely will be affected in some way, as will the profits of all the other major players: the hospitals, the drug companies, the medical device manufacturers, and the insurers, just to name a few. The list is long, and the platoons of highly paid and well-connected lobbyists who represent their interests comprise a large private army that conquered Capitol Hill years ago.

One has to wonder, then, how in the world Congress was able to include a provision in last year’s health care reform law to establish an independent board that would strip Congress of some of the authority it currently has — but rarely is able to exercise — over the Medicare program.

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Stephen Kemble - Why Competition Among Health Plans Can't Help Us

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Competition-Among-Heal-by-Stephen-Kemble-111117-858.html

November 17, 2011 By Stephen Kemble Insurance is a system for managing financial risk. When a high percentage of a population has known risk, as the case with health insurance when so many have pre-existing conditions and risk factors, then competition does not reward better plans, it rewards avoiding covering or paying for the sick, undermining the whole purpose of health insurance. With or without with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the total national cost of U.S. health care is rising unsustainably, with an increasingly unaffordable share pushed onto patients.1,2 CMS projections of total national health expenditures show a rise from 17.8% of gross domestic product in 2010 to 21% in 2019 under the ACA, compared to 20.8% in 2019 under prior law, both far higher than any other country.2 Problems with access to care are widespread and increasing. Doctors and hospitals are seeing reimbursement cut while administrative burdens escalate. Unwarranted regional variations in health spending point to large amounts of money wasted on unnecessary care.3 Even with advanced planning via a health savings account, expecting individuals to pay for modern health care out of pocket is only possible for the relatively healthy and wealthy. If we are to have health care financing that can cover those with serious or chronic illnesses, we must choose between the private health insurance industry and government-funded health care. We are inclined to believe that government is always inefficient and that the solution to problems with excessive cost and waste is to use competition to bring fiscal discipline and efficiency to an otherwise dysfunctional "market." However, there are fundamental structural reasons why this assumption does not apply to U.S. health care.

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Dean Baker - The Myth of the Wealthy Elderly

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Myth-of-the-Wealthy-El-by-Dean-Baker-111115-41.html

November 15, 2011 By Dean Baker As retirees age, rising Medicare premiums will be reducing the buying power of their Social Security check each year. And this is the median; half of all seniors will have less income than this to support themselves. The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare has been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There were two reports released last week that call this view into question. The first was a report from the Census Bureau that used a new experimental poverty index. This index differed from the official measure in several ways; most importantly it includes the value of government non-cash benefits, like food stamps. It also adjusts for differences in costs by area and takes account of differences in health spending by age.

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