Literary Review of Overdo$ed America
Overdo$ed America written by Dr. Abramson describes how the pharmaceutical companies had created a monopoly through compromising medical journal articles, promoting newer and more expensive dangerous medications, and affecting the doctor patient relationship negatively through false advertisements (seen in Claritin). Dr. Abramson's book is a great work on medical ethics. The book details how it is possible to be ethical in medicine despite the corruption and deceit that has increased since the 1980s and 1990s. With pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies attempting to take autonomy from primary care physicians since the 1980s, Dr. Abramson describes how it is still possible to remain ethical and moral by choosing to not be a part of corruption and deceit.
We learn that there is always a choice to remain ethical and practice integrity. There is the choice to persevere with morality despite the temporary lies of the snake that says, "Everyone sins. Why not sin and be like everyone else?" We can choose to avoid the lies of the snake knowing that there are individuals that are good and practice integrity. We do not need to believe the temporary lies of the snake that envies when individuals worship GOD Almighty. We choose to remain ethical and speak out against corruption especially when it attempts to promote faulty "medications" and "vaccines". We can choose to avoid adverse experimental "vaccines" and expose corruption.
Medical Advancements in the Early and Mid 1900s and Decreased Medical Care Quality in the 1980s
Dr. Abramson described how there have been substantial medical advances in the US since the 1900s. There have been great medications and treatments created since the beginning of the 20th century. Dr. Abramson offers constructive criticism concerning how medicine has been commercialized since the 1980s and resulted in the decreased quality of medical care. This is interesting because science is a tool that can be used to help individuals and patients instead of leading to poor health outcomes including heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis, and falls. There have been great innovations in medicine such as the Polio vaccine that was created in the 1950s by the healthy competition of Dr. Salks and Dr. Sabin that resulted in the decrease of polio cases and lower limb paralysis. The cardiopulmonary bypass machine has helped with surgery in the 1950s. Coronary artery bypass graft surgeries also were successful in the 1960s to remove blocked arteries.
Dialysis machines created in the 1960s have helped individuals with chronic kidney disease. Hip and knee replacement surgeries allow for increased mobility for patients. There have been medical innovations such as Dr. Debackey's heart surgery inventions that have helped patients survive heart surgery. Izoniazid and streptomycin were antibiotic treatments that helped against bacterial infections. Tagamet was created in 1977 and helped against ulcers. Zantac was later created and approved because it caused less side effects than Tagamet. Prilosec OTC was later approved being better, cheaper, and without the need of a prescription compared to Zantac. Medical innovations and inventions have helped patients. Despite great innovations, medical care quality has decreased since the 1980s due to socialism's attempts to corrupt medical research, the medical supplies industry, and medicine. Socialism has attempted to decrease the quality of medical innovations seen most obviously with the covid experimental "vaccine" in 2019, yet even newer, expensive medications approved in the 1980s (including statins) can cause adverse health effects. Surveys and statistics have described how the quality of medical care in the US has decreased. It is most likely because of corruption and socialism (monopoly "capitalism") The quality of health care has decreased due to the decreased autonomy of physicians since the 1980s seen in how insurance companies have tried to usurp authority, and socialists have fought against H.M.O. plans that were actually suppressing the cost of medical care. H.M.O. plans were actually cost effective in the 1980s and also gave physicians autonomy to practice. Because H.M.O.s were cost effect and not allowing medical costs to balloon to double digits, socialists slandered and lied about cost saving H.M.O.s with great physicians who were preventing a rising cost of medical care while providing great medical care quality in primary care.
"Then I saw an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in July 2000, claiming that 'the U.S. population does not have anywhere near the best health in the world.'"- (page 44-45)
"The low ranking of Americans' health reported in this article was so disparate from what I had believed that I started to look for other sources of comparitive data to see if this was right. An extensive comparison of the health of the citizens of industrialized countries done by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) confirmed the conclusions presented in Dr. Starfield's article. The United States again ranked poorly, with 18 industrialized countries having greater life expectancy."- (page 45)
"Children born in the United States today can expect to live the equivalent of about 69.3 healthy years of life, while children born in the other 22 industrialized countries can expect an average of 2.5 additional years of healthy life."- (page 46)
Corruption in Medicine in the 1940s
"Estrogen was approved by the FDA in 1942 for the treatment of symptoms associated with menopause." -(page 59)
"Clearly, restricting the use of Estrogen to women with troublesome menopausal symptoms limited its potential market greatly. If more drugs were to be sold, new reasons to take estrogen would have to be found."- (page 60)
"Estrogen became the most frequently prescribed drug in the United States in 1966. It remained one of the most frequently prescribed drugs through 1975."- (page 62)
It is difficult to pinpoint when medicine began to be corrupted. In the 1940s, there was a case of corruption when a corrupt physician, Dr. Wilson, decided to publish a book and an article in a medical journal about how estrogen replacement therapy helped women with menopause and also prevented "breast and gential cancer" in 1962. Combined estrogen therapy was marketed as supposedly helping decrease cervical cancer (1979), heart attacks (1985), strokes, and improved overall health.
"In a 1962 article published in JAMA, Dr. Wilson, a gynecologist, reported the results of a study in which 304 women had been treated with estrogen. Though 18 cancers were predicted over the time that the women had been taking estrogen, none developed."- (page 60)
"Perhaps Wilson's own tongue had been sharpened by the support his foundation was receiving from several drug companies, including the manufacturer of estrogen. In 1965 the Wilson Research Foundation received $34,000 (the equivalent of about $175,000 in 2004 dollars) in contributions from drug companies, enough to cover Wilson's expenses while he was writing his book. In total, Wilson's foundation received $1.3 million from drug companies."- (page 60)
Dr. Wilson had financial ties with pharmaceutical companies (Wyeth-Ayerst) who paid him to promote estrogen replacement therapy. It was noted in the 2000s that estrogen replacement therapy increases cancer incidence in women 8% for every year that they take estrogen. Dr. Wilson did not describe the risk of cancer in the 1940s despite there probably being cases.
It was not until 2003 and 2004 that new studies described that taking estrogen replacement therapy causes cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, and heart attacks. It is possible that estrogen replacement therapy was marketed as an amazing treatment by pharmaceutical companies since the 1940s as population control. Socialists hate that the population size keeps growing and probably falsely marketed estrogen replacement therapy as a good treatment in the 1940s without real scientific evidence. A lying journal article and a lying book were used to promote cancer causing medication to women in the 1940s. It took 60 years to find out that estrogen replacement therapy actually caused adverse health effects. (Covid experimental "vaccines" may not be good vaccinations either despite lies from socialist propaganda.)
It seems that because American industriousness and ethics allowed for innovations in medicine since the 1900s, socialists wanted to prevent such great medical care and advancements starting in 1942 with false lying information published about estrogen replacement therapy. Initially, it was stated that estrogen replacement therapy prevented cancer while actually causing different types of cancer, strokes, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's disease. Researchers published medical journal articles in 1975 that described that estrogen replacement therapy caused cancer. Taking estrogen replacement therapy increased the risk of cancer 14 times after seven years of treatment. Yet another lying article stated that adding progestin hormone to estrogen therapy prevented cancer. This was probably to protect sales of estrogen replacement therapy in 1979.
"In December 1975, two articles published in NEJM showed that estrogen therapy increased the risk of cancer of the lining of the uterus (endometrial cancer), up to 14-fold after seven years of treatment. This fear was quashed when, four years later, in 1979, an article published in the Lancet showed that adding another hormone, progestin, for about 10 days each month to estrogen therapy prevented the changes in the lining of the uterus that predisposed to cancer. Several other studies soon confirmed that progestin protected women on estrogen therapy from developing endometrial cancer. Still, HRT had been linked with cancer in the public's mind, and sales plummeted. Only half as many prescriptions for Estrogen were filled in 1980 as had been filled in 1975."-(page 62)
"An aggressive drug rehabilitation program was needed. 'Marketing a disease is the best way to market a drug.'"- (page 62) [Osteoporosis was marketed as a disease that could be improved with estrogen replacement therapy in 1986.]
Since individuals were realizing that estrogen may have caused cancer in 1975, the socialists decided to rehabilitate the medication by marketing osteoporosis as another disease that can be treated with estrogen. Before 1985, few people had heard about osteoporosis being a deadly disease. Osteoporosis was marketed heavily in the 1980s as a dangerous disease for women that could lead to falls and fractures in order to sell estrogen since sales had plummeted in the 1970s. It is possible that the disease was heavily marketed to increase sales of estrogen.
"And osteoporosis or thinning of the bones was a perfect disease to market: there are no symptoms until you develop fractures, so no postmenopausal woman could be sure she was safe. And the criteria were set so that one quarter of all women over 65, and more than half over 75, would be diagnosed with the disease if they had bone density tests. There was, however, a lot of work to be done to turn osteoporosis from part of the normal spectrum of skeletal aging into a feared disease."- (page 62)
Osteoporosis may have been marketed in advertising by pharmaceutical companies in medical journal ads, funded medical meetings, and lectures about osteoporosis to make osteoporosis a feared disease and cause estrogen sales to increase again. The pharmaceutical industry did not care about the health of women, and instead chose to market a non-existent disease (osteoporosis is actually normal in the aging process and improves with exercise and nutrition) that caused the prescribing of estrogen therapy. This may have led to numerous cases of heart attacks, strokes, cancers, and Alzheimer's disease to women. This was while it was known in 1975 that estrogen therapy caused cancer. The pharmaceutical companies marketed a drug that was known to cause cancer in 1975.
"The next step was to 'educate' the public. In 1985, only 23 percent of women had heard of osteoporosis. But, according to US News and World Report, that changed quickly as the result of the efforts of Burson-Marsteller, the public relations firm hired by Wyeth-Ayerst. The campaign was successful at increasing public concern (some would say unnecessary fear), generating many articles in women's magazines and culminating in National Osteoporosis Week. The National Osteoporosis Foundation was started with drug company support in 1986. Doctors and patients came to fear that undiagnosed osteoporosis would lead to hip bones' suddenly snapping with minimal trauma, though in more than 20 years as a busy family doctor I never saw such a thing."
The pharmaceutical companies caused for estrogen to be seen as a good treatment to osteoporosis by helping create disinformation in ads, National Osteoporosis Week, and even the National Osteoporosis Foundation to educate women on the need to take estrogen. The pharmaceutical companies followed the disinformation about osteoporosis with additional lies that estrogen replacement therapy prevented heart attacks while actually causing heart attacks. The prescribing of estrogen increased to its 1975 high prescription levels in 1992 through lies and deceit and may be responsible for adverse health outcomes further described in randomized controlled studies in 2004.
"Coinciding with the public's "education" about osteoporosis was a 1985 report in NEJM about the positive effect of estrogen on the risk of heart disease. More than 30,000 postmenopausal women participating in the Nurse's Health Study, which followed the women for more than three years, showed that nurses who were currently using estrogen had 70 percent less risk of developing coronary heart disease than women who had not used hormones-a dramatic finding."- (page 63) [Another lying article published in a medical journal about estrogen therapy decreasing heart attack risk after sales had decreased.]
"By 1992, estrogen sales were topping their 1975 peak."
"One out of five postmenopausal women in the United States was taking hormones. The prestigious American College of Physicians issued guidelines to practicing physicians recommending that 'all women... should consider preventive hormone therapy,' and that 10 to 20 years of therapy were recommended for 'maximum benefit'. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology also recommended that all postmenopausal women, barring a medical contraindication like breast cancer, should take HRT for life. Bolstered by the recommendations of these professional organizations, estrogen use increased another 40 percent over the next three years. In 1995 estrogen once again became the most frequently prescribed brand-name drug in the United States. Perhaps the strongest evidence supporting routing HRT was presented in a 1997 article published in NEJM showing that 'mortality among women who use postmenopausal hormones is lower than among nonusers,' again overriding continuing concerns about the link to breast cancer."- (page 64)
After promoting estrogen as a treatment for osteoporosis and prevention of heart attacks, sales of estrogen increased. In 1992, one out of five women were taking estrogen replacement therapy even after studies in 1975 described that estrogen replacement therapy caused cancer. This was due to the advertisements placed in medical journals and lying medical journal articles published in 1979 and 1985. Not only the pharmaceutical companies created the Osteoporosis Foundation to promote estrogen as a treatment for osteoporosis, but they also told the American College of Physicians and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology to promote estrogen replacement therapy. In 1997, another lying article was published in the NEJM stating that women who took estrogen replacement therapy had lower mortality rates. It was not until the year 2000 that truthful journal articles described the risk of increased cancer incidence of women who took estrogen replacement therapy. Instead of helping women be healthier, estrogen replacement therapy caused increased mortality rates in postmenopausal women.
"It is amazing that before 1998, not one of the claims supporting the benefits of HRT had been substantiated by large randomized control trials."- (page 66)
"In 1998 the results of the first randomized controlled clinical trial of HRT were published. This manufacturer-sponsored study showed that despite significantly lowering LDL (bad) cholesterol and raising HDL (good) cholesterol, HRT increased women's risk of heart disease by 50 percent in the first year. And over the four years of the study, treatment with hormones provided no reduction in the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. In fact, this study showed that the overall death rate was not lower in the women who took hormones; it was slightly higher.
It was noted in 1998 and in the 2000s in medical journal articles that combined estrogen and progestin hormone replacement therapy caused worsening health effects such as heart attacks and strokes. It is questionable how estrogen therapy could have been promoted on medical journals, books, magazines, and commercials for so long while actually leading to cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and even dementia. It was not until 2004 that estrogen and combined estrogen replacement therapy was repudiated as a treatment due to multiple scientific studies with randomized control trials. (There is the need for healthy skepticism with new medications and "vaccines".)
Increased Corruption in the 1980s in Medicine
It seems that the 1980s was when medicine began to be increasingly corrupted by financial ties with big pharma and researchers from medical journal articles (newer statins). Cost saving H.M.O.'s and great primary care physicians were under attack from the socialist media for preventing the rising cost of medical care while also preventing chronic disease in patients.
Great primary care and cost saving insurance H.M.O.'s were preventing medical costs from increasing substantially. Socialists despised that Americans were getting affordable quality care and began to state lies about how doctor visits were being rushed and that cost saving H.M.O.'s were not good. This led to increased medical costs with inflation of prices in the double digits. Quality of care also decreased because counseling the patient on preventative medicine was not remunerated economically while patient visit times were decreased. While lifestyle changes such as exercise, nutrition counseling, and smoking cessation have led to healthier lives without the need of newer, expensive, and brand name medication, patient counseling was not looked upon favorably by socialists (prevention of chronic diseases). This would describe why the patient doctor visit times were significantly decreased from an hour or thirty minutes prior to 1980s to fifteen minutes. (There was a psychiatrist that was let go for spending more than fifteen minutes per visit with her patients while being an amazing psychiatrist in the 2010s).
Why Medical Care Quality in the US Has Decreased Despite Higher Costs?
Dr. Abramson described that since 2004 the cost of medical care in the United States has increased significantly while the quality has not improved. It has been noted that the quality of care in the US has decreased because of big pharma's influence on primary care, changes in the doctor-patient relationship (decrease of time in doctor visits), and also because of the commercialization of medicine (despite no universal healthcare). On the measure of performance on the level of health, the US was number 72 in the world.
"Despite the poor performance of the American health care system, our healthcare costs are simply staggering. In 2004, health expenditures in the United States are projected to exceed $6,100 for every man, woman, and child. How does this compare with other countries? The United States spends more than twice as much per person on health care as the other industrialized nations. Even taking into account our higher per person gross domestic product, the United States spends 42 percent more on healthcare per person than would be expected, given spending in healthcare in the other OECD nations. The excess spending on health care in the United States is like a yearly tax of more than $1,800 on every American citizen. (And still the United States is the only industrialized country that does not provide universal health insurance, leaving more than 43 million Americans uninsured.)"- (page 46)
The United States has increased spending in health care, yet the quality of the medical care has decreased according to surveys and statistics. Most of this is due to many factors dealing with envy and socialism. It is known that primary care medicine is vital and indispensible for a nation's good health. Nations with good and excellent health care have multiple primary care physicians. Almost 50% of physicians in countries with excellent healthcare are primary care physicians and not specialists (compared to less than 30% in the US). In the United States, there are more specialists than primary care doctors since socialist medical mentality has disdained primary care for its long hours, decreased pay, and the manner that primary care actually allows for preventative medicine to be practiced. Preventative medicine prevents chronic disease from becoming worse disease. (Specialists are still needed in countries with good healthcare, yet primary care physicians are actually given importance, respect, and are seen with admiration for preventing chronic disease through the patient-doctor visit.) The socialists in the US since the 1980s have attempted to portray primary care as "insignificant", low paying, too much work, and inane while giving positive support of other specialties. Younger doctors since the 1980s were discouraged from being primary care physicians while being led to high paying specialties creating a limited amount of primary care physicians. Less primary care physicians means less preventative care. Less preventative care means more chronic diseases. More chronic diseases means more spending on health care.) Do socialists prefer instructing preventative care or allowing for less preventative care and more chronic disease? Socialists prefer chronic disease and disdain preventative care. That is why primary care has been disdained by socialists in the US since the 1980s.
There is also the manner that medicine is a practice that has increased litigation also since the 1980s. This is because socialists want patients and doctors to be hostile to each other instead of being partners in the improvement of health. Socialists wanted patients and doctors to be in conflict instead of working together. This has been seen in how litigation increased in the medical field causing doctors to order unnecessary testing based on patient requests or in order to prevent a negative patient visit to prevent litigation (this makes sense of why unnecessary tests and treatments have caused for medicine to increase in costs. Can not blame the physicians for this and rather can blame socialism (monopoly "capitalism"). The socialists probably caused for litigation to be seen in medicine after causing the decreased patient visit times from 30 minute to an hour visits prior to 1980 to 15 minutes.) Instead of only ordering needed tests and treatment, doctors had to order unnecessary tests in order to prevent litigation rather than not order tests. Litigation in medicine is from socialism. (Yet at the same time in 2019, pharmaceutical companies did not want individuals to litigate against pharmacutical companies and faulty covid experimental "vaccines".)
Another cause of increased spending in medicine while causing decreased quality of care has been the manner that pharmaceutical medications have been seen as the solution to everything. Instead, preventative care is more important to preventing disease. Expensive, newer, and brand name medication has caused increased costs in medical care. Part of the high cost of medicine is due to expensive medication that is not better than generics. Medicare also helped pharmaceutical companies prescribe newer and more expensive medication instead of generics in the 2000s. Dr. Abramson described how some of the dangerous medications (Pravachol, Lipitor, Vioxx, Celebrex, Actonel, and Fosamax) were among the most prescribed to medicare recipients instead of generic medication. Even tax payers had to pitch in to pay for expensive bad meds in the 2000s. The newer and more expensive bad medications may have also caused strokes, heart attacks, osteoporosis, and falls that also increased medical costs while not increasing quality of care. This describes why medical care has decreased in quality while increasing in cost.
This is also with the understanding that there is no universal healthcare in the US. Instead there are faulty covid experimental "vaccines". Not the best of times.
