HCCD Report Missouri 63146

Health Care Community Discussion
27 December 2008

Host: Moritz, St. Louis, MO
Moderator: Dr. David, DC
Full Attendee List:
Moritz
Dr. David, DC
Dr. Katharine, DC
Carol
Teresa
Mark
Tamara
Athea

Points made, more or less in the order they came up:

• References:
  • Chiropractic First Aid by Major Bertrand DeJarnette, DC, DO
  • Neurological Reflex First Aid by Joseph F. Unger, Jr., D.C., F.I.C.S.
  • Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (www.oism.org/s32p1820.htm) “Revolutionizing Diagnostic Medicine” – presentation about the analytical and Internet technology now available that makes possible the transfer of diagnostic medicine away from the medical monopoly and into the hands of medical consumers.
• Issue with the Participant Guide – in Section I Overview of the Problem, no mention is made of the connection between mandated insurance, fraud, and the rising costs of health care.
• The Biggest Problems in the Health System:
  • The current health care system is disease-oriented, not health-oriented.
  • Attacks from the allopathic medicine and pharmaceutical industries continue against complementary and integrative medicine (for example, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy [HBOT], Chiropractic, Vitamins; including lack of insurance coverage or inconsistent insurance coverage). [Note: we understand that there may be a House Resolution in Congress now regarding HBOT, but we do not have the specific reference.]
  • The monopoly created by the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, Insurance Companies, Pharmaceutical Companies, and the Food & Drug Administration. This leads to a rigidly regulated system that limits the consumers’ freedom of health care choice, increases fraud and abuse in the health care system, and increases the cost of health care.
  • Direct-to-Consumer drug advertising leads to increased use of drugs, over-medication, rising cost of drugs, and the false impression that drugs are always needed when in fact they are not (for example, ulcer drugs, psychotropic drugs.)
  • Missouri has a law against direct-to-consumer drug advertising, but it is not enforced because it is pre-empted by federal law and circumstance.
  • The medical costs of illegal aliens help to drive up the cost of health care.
• POIGNANT STORY
  One of the attendees at this discussion has a court-appointed guardian who can only send her to doctors on the court approved list of allopathic doctors. She was making significant health gains prior to having a court-appointed guardian, but she can no longer visit this doctor because the guardian cannot legally send her to this doctor, and her health has deteriorated as a result.
• The Best Ways to Address the Issues:
  • Noone should be allowed to make health care laws who has not worked directly in health care. Legislators do not know what the doctors have to deal with (e.g. arbitrary insurance rules). Health care should be a private decision, not a government regulation.
  • There are too many middlement – too many regulators.
• POIGNANT STORY
  One of the attendees at this discussion relates that her office staff’s health care premiums are figured based on including the ages of the older practice owners even though they are not even covered under this insurance. Their age skews the average, raising the insurance premiums for the much younger office staff.
• The whole health care system is coercive, and the most coercive of all is mental health care. For example, a child can be taken away from parents for medical neglect when the parents do not want the child given some particular treatment or drugs.
• Insurance Companies tell the Doctors what they will pay; patients are now accustomed to paying nothing (or very little) out of the own pockets. Doctors cannot charge more than the insurance companies will pay them.
• Regarding a National Medical Records Database – there is no way for these records to be secure so that it does not interfere with peoples’ eligibility for insurance or employment.
• Medicare and Medicaid are so poorly paid that it leads to fraud. Put this money instead into public hospitals and clinics for free or low-cost basic health care, staffed by salaried state employees, and cut out the enforced insurance middlemen.
• In the late 1980’s the rise of Managed Care caused a big shift. Instead of lowering health care cost, Managed Care made health care cost rise, along with the increase of drug use, bad diets and bad nutrition. Managed Care added complicated administrative solutions jacking up the cost of health care.
• The current system may work for crisis care, but is inadequate for preventive and general (basic) care.

  Participant Surveys
  Most participants wrote in their own answers to the survey questions instead of choosing one of the listed choices.

  Question 1 – What do you perceive is the biggest problem in the health system?

  • (6 responses) The Monopoly of Insurance Companies, Pharmaceutical Companies, the American Medical Association, and the FDA working together to produce a coercive health care system that limits personal freedom of health care choice and drives up costs, including legal and administrative costs.
  • (1 response) Free health care to illegal immigrants

  Question 2 – What do you think is the best way for policy makers to develop a plan to address the health system problems?

  • (4 responses) Policy Makers (legislators) making health care policies and laws MUST have health care experience so that they are familiar with the actual realities of running a health care practice.

  Question 3 – After this discussion, what additional input and information would best help you to continue to participate in this great debate?

  • (6 responses) All of these health care discussion group reports should be summarized and published on the Internet.

  The group agreed that they would like to submit the following “vision for a state department of mental health” as a set of recommendations they would like the Transition Health Policy Team to consider.

  Vision for a State Department of Mental Health

  • No person should ever be forced to undergo electric shock treatment, psychosurgery, coercive psychiatric treatment, or the enforced administration of mind-altering drugs. Governments should outlaw such abuses. Prosecute as a criminal offense any and all cases of physical damage caused through psychiatry's use of electroshock, brain surgery or abusive drug "treatment."
  • People in desperate circumstances must be provided proper and effective medical care. Medical, not psychiatric, attention, good nutrition, a healthy, safe environment and activity that promotes confidence will do far more than the brutality of psychiatry's drug treatments. Housing and work will do more for the homeless than the life-debilitating effects of psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric treatments that destroy responsibility.
  • The use of physical and mechanical restraints should be outlawed. Until this occurs, any psychiatric staff member—and the psychiatrist who authorized the procedure— should be criminally culpable should the restraint result in physical damage or death.
  • Insist the community treatment laws that rely upon mandatory and thereby coercive measures be abolished, and dismantle or prevent "mental health courts" which are another conduit for drugging our communities.
  • Humane mental health hospitals and homes must be established to replace coercive psychiatric institutions. These must have a full complement of competent physical (nonpsychiatric) doctors and medical diagnostic equipment, which non-psychiatric medical doctors can use to thoroughly examine and test for all underlying physical problems that may be manifesting as disturbed behavior. Government and private funds should be channeled into this rather than abusive psychiatric institutions and programs that have proven not to work.
  • Legal protections should be put in place to ensure that psychiatrists and psychologists are prohibited from violating the right of every person to exercise all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in other relevant instruments.
  • Appropriate state regulatory agencies should investigate every complaint of psychiatric assault, fraud or illicit drug selling. Such agencies should revoke or suspend a psychiatrist's or psychologist's license for such criminal practices. All patient complaints of sexual abuse should be referred to the police, attorney general or prosecutor who are obligated to investigate and prosecute.
  • The responsible officials of regulatory agencies or their advisors must be held accountable and criminally charged for harm caused by psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric "treatment" if it is established that they knew, or should have known, of such harm either through clinical trial results, adverse reaction reports or broadly available public information.
  • Establish rights for patients and their insurance companies to receive refunds for mental health treatment which did not achieve the promised result or improvement, or which resulted in proven harm to the individual, thereby ensuring that responsibility lies with the individual practitioner and psychiatric facility rather than the government or its agencies.
  • Clinical and financial audits must be done of all government-run and private psychiatric facilities that receive government subsidies or insurance payments to ensure accountability, and the compilation of statistics on admissions, treatment and deaths, without breaching patient confidentiality.
  • Establish or increase the number of psychiatric fraud investigation units to recover funds that are embezzled in the mental health system.
  • Taxpayers' money must not be used to fund psychiatry's unworkable methods and "treatment" for "diseases" that cannot be scientifically verified.
  • It must be recognized that every person is responsible for his or her own actions and must be held accountable for their actions. State legislators should repeal any laws permitting the insanity defense and diminished capacity pleas.
  • Remove psychiatrists and psychologists as advisors or as counselors from courts, police forces, prisons, criminal rehabilitation and parole services, and educational institutions. Because psychiatrists have no scientific foundation for their claims, do not permit them to render opinions about or to treat drug addiction, criminal behavior and delinquency, or to probe for alleged dangerous behavior.
  • None of the 374 mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (or those in the International Classifications of Diseases mental disorders section) should be eligible for insurance coverage because they have no scientific, physical validation.