Monday, December 21, 2009

Government is Cause of High Costs of Health Care

By Dr. Elaina George

The reality about the health care bill is that the government's insertion into healthcare has led to the high costs that we are living with today. It began when the Medicare reimbursements to physicians were disconnected from the costs of delivering quality healthcare. For over 10 years the reimbursements for physicians has dropped every year while the cost of supplies, malpractice premiums and overhead expenses have continued to rise. This is the underlying engine for the cost shifting to both insured and self pay patients that we have seen over the years. It has become an untenable situation leading physicians to seek paid positions in hospitals, form large single and multi-specialty groups, opt out of the system and move towards a concierge model or leave the practice of medicine completely. Overall, this has led to a fracture in the doctor patient relationship, and a rise in the number and clinical expansion of providers such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners in an effort to fill the gap left by the physician's need to see an ever increasing patient load per day to keep the doors open. [more...]

Dr Elaina George is a Board certified Otolaryngologist. She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Biology. She received her Masters degree in Medical Microbiology from Long Island University, and received her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr George completed her residency at Manhattan, Eye Ear & Throat Hospital.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Practicing Gratitude Daily

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

November is a reflective time of year, one packed with beauty, splendour, wonder and tradition - a perfect time to ponder gratitude. Whether you are seasoned in the art of gratitude or a novice spending time developing this skill, you will reap huge benefits. The emotional and physiological benefits are numerous. Being thankful and holding that feeling for just 15-20 seconds can actually reduce the stress hormones in your body, relax the coronary arteries and increase the blood supply to your heart. Another bonus, which we are all concerned about today as we face the H1N1 swine flu is that being grateful can actually increase your immune system. Doesn't this sound like a skill that you should spend some time investing in? By contrast, the use of anti-depressant medication has nearly doubled over the last 10-year period from 1996-2005. Currently, 10 percent of the population over the age of 6 is taking some kind of psychotropic drug. Is being "medicated" the new normal? [more…]

Thursday, September 17, 2009

A Great Big Public Health Experiment - At What Cost?

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

The powerful topic from BusinessWeek, September 7, 2009 reads: Is Merck Overselling a Cancer Vaccine? This served as a very stimulating topic for my show last week as fresh controversies heat up over the marketing of products to "protect cervical cancer." Great debate exists over the topic of vaccinations in general; however, this particular vaccine is of concern because what is sold is a protection against cancer when in fact it is really a protection against some strains of HPV or the human papilloma virus. As both a doctor and mother myself, this leaves room for great discussion with real facts as well as honest science. I think of the majority of moms who wouldn't even think twice about saying "of course, let's vaccinate" if they were told by their physician this will protect your daughter from cervical cancer. After all, what mom wouldn't? ...based on a physician saying just that. Caution-there's more to the story. [more...]

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Debunking the H1N1 Swine Flu

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

The news media is beginning to create hysteria and fear surrounding the H1N1 Swine Flu. I must first say, this is very real and to be taken seriously. However, it is not different than any other health situation where people in poor health are at greater risk. This is always the case! Everyone needs to be aware of building and strengthening their immune system. Infants, babies, toddlers and the elderly have a natural weakened immunity. Obviously, respect the importance of sleep, water, limit alcohol and smoking. Be aware of your body's reaction to stress and limit wherever possible. I suggest everyone watch a very important 60 Minutes video on my Web site and listen to the podcast of my show. You'll also find the suggested quality supplements you'll need. Please before you make any decisions educate yourself. [more...]

Thursday, August 13, 2009

We Don't Have a Health Care Crisis - We Have a Crisis in How We Think About Health Care

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

As I sicken myself glossing over the 1,000+ page document supposedly created to “reform” our troubled health care system, the thought of my illness turns from acute to chronic. I become nauseous at the thought of the expense we continue to incur with government-ease attorney writings, which have absolutely nothing to do with health and everything to do with creating more expense with the likes of “judicial review” and so-called “Health Choices Commissioner” as well as the “Health Care Exchange.” Benjamin Rush, MD, a founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence said over 200 years ago: “Unless we put medical freedom into The Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers.” The words I read in this 2009 document certainly sound like an undercover dictatorship - one that was envisioned by a very wise man. [more…]

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Unhealthy Bed Partners

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

As promised, this is the first week of the action steps to reverse our current health care crisis. In an industry that spends $50 billion on advertising alone, this first action step requires an honest inventory of the relationship of 'Big Pharma' and the politicians it gets elected to run our government. Unless we get Big Pharma out of medical schools we will never change our present mentality, which has us stuck in a revolving door. The revolving door presents room for the disease model only. Allow me to explain. In our current system, we use a disease model rather than a wellness model for health care. We therefore spend all our time and resources on disease. We look to a pill and/or surgery as the answer to every health problem. Don't get me wrong; we need both pharmaceuticals and surgery. The fact of the matter is that both save lives. The problem is that we abuse them rather than use them. Such faulty thinking eliminates the personal responsibility of the individual. Lack of freedom creates lack of responsibility. This allegiance presents misguided judgments from even the best-intended thoughts. [more...]

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

America's Health Care Crisis

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

Benjamin Rush MD, a Founding Father and Declaration of Independence signer, stated: "Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privilege to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are UN-American and despotic and have no place in a republic. The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."

Over 200 years later, we are living what Dr. Rush envisioned. We must adhere to a dictatorship - a failing one at that. The answers to our health care conundrum lie in freedom of choice - freedom, which rewards all of us personally as well as nationally. The answers are there; however, they require honest politics, dissemination of information free of censorship, closing of the revolving door between the FDA and Big Pharma, education, and the rewarding of positive lifestyle behaviors by each and every American who are willing to restore health to the USA. Over the next several months, I will be proposing an action item a week to reverse our current health care crisis. Stay tuned... [more...]

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Food Safety Bill?

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

If Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has her way, H.R. 875 ("Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009") will be a reality. She introduced this bill February 4, 2009 while the nation was in deep debate over passage of President Obama's "Stimulus Bill." Smart move. DeLauro's bill is supposed to protect the U.S. food supply; however, it leaves a lot of wiggle room. It leaves small farmers, especially organic farmers, at a great disadvantage to the corporate giants. Enter the world of politics. As we all know by now, in politics, everything is premeditated, nothing is by accident. This bill masquerades itself as a food safety bill while cutting the legs out from under the farmers - the blood, sweat and tears behind the family farm in America. You would think we are finally waking up; we are going green (even Washington tells us to go green) but you're wrong. It's only on the terms specified by the giants. So what mega giant business would benefit from knocking out any competition? Monsanto, the giant of genetically engineered food - the same folks that brought us the excitotoxin aspartame, which literally translates to exciting your neurons to death. That one was snuck in under the guise of helping you to lose weight, so of course it's good for you. Interestingly enough Congresswoman DeLauro's husband , Stanley Greenberg, a political strategist, has Monsanto as a client. Change? Where is the change? [more...]

Monday, March 16, 2009

OTC Antibiotics: A Bad Idea

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

The health care crisis stems from the bottom up. That is the foundation of our thinking. We are entrenched by the thoughts that the pill is the answer to every health problem. Let's trace the roots of that origin. We use a disease model for health care in this country - backed by a $50 billion pharmaceutical marketing budget. Given those two facts, why would any citizen think any differently than this: live as though your health was a given, wait to get sick, take a pill, wait to get better, and the best part is that there is no personal responsibility involved. We even give out FREE antibiotics in our stores as incentives to get shoppers. We even have the budget to have the free antibiotic commercials to play during prime time television advertising slots - free and they still have a budget for it.

The reality of free antibiotics is a serious mistake. It has been called "well-intentioned but obviously ill-advised." Well-intentioned by whom? The disease specialists at the CDC are painfully aware of the damage being done by antibiotics abuse. Serious problems for all of society arise when the dispensing of free antibiotics creates drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Such a situation alarms infectious disease specialists who say they have been fighting for years to reduce the demand for antibiotics. Years of physicians' education coupled with public education.

Look at the big picture here. If we never offer an alternative, the demand will never be reduced. Doctors have even said they prescribe them for patients with a cold, where antibiotics are not the drug of choice, simply because they don't work on viruses just to "shut a patient up" because they went to the doctor to obtain a prescription, plain and simple. But of course they do. We tell them they need it. We bombard them with advertising. Health care crisis, indeed! How will we ever rise from our current economic situation if we never change the fundamentals of our problem: prescription reliance? If we continue to prescribe unnecessary drugs to patients who ask their doctors for them, there will always be a budget deficit in the health care sector. [more...]

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The True Pathology of America

By Evelyn Higgins

If you look at the $50 billion dollar marketing budget that the pharmaceutical industry spends to convince us that drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, are the only resolution to our self proclaimed "pathologies," you would easily understand that this is the why we think the way we do. It has become a part of our culture. It would also lend itself to figuring out why we are sitting right smack in the middle of a looming health care crisis. We have little to no conceptual idea of what wellness and prevention means when our answer to every medical problem or imperfection of humanness is met through pharmaceutical routes. Unless we start revving up our engines for wellness and prevention and see health as more than simply the absence of disease, we will never come out of this crisis. Our imperfections lie in our mindset! You would also believe that each and every one of us, in our humanness, actually have "pathologies" that must be treated with medications. In reality, the situation is that every day we have human experiences, which can result in occasional anxiety for a given social situation, perhaps one that even left you baffled because it never happened before nor again. The pushing of drugs for our "illnesses" has come to an all time high - or low depending on how you look at it. The new "drugs for everything" approach to life, has left us bankrupt in the lifestyle changes department - bankrupt in the area of those situations or complications which actually make us grow in wisdom and character and develop us physically, emotionally, intellectually as well as spiritually. We have come to the societal conclusion that for one to be healthy and happy, requires medication. What a crutch we choose to stand on, which takes away our most valuable lessons as a result. [more...]

Monday, February 2, 2009

Obesity Tax... At What Cost?

By Dr. Evelyn Higgins

New York Governor Paterson proposed an 18 percent sales tax on non-diet soda and juice drinks in an effort to reduce the state's budget deficit. The tax would not affect bottled water, diet soda, coffee, tea or milk and is estimated to raise more than $400 million in its first year. So we had the usual complaints from the people. First, government should not be involved with personal behavior such as what people eat. The beverage industry also says the proposal would harm industry jobs in New York. New York sees an easy way to raise money and other states will follow. New York is far from the most obese state, so this could raise considerable revenue for other states. In reality, government has already been intimately involved in what we eat in negative ways. For instance, by allowing sugar laden beverages to be promoted in schools or by failing to restrict marketing of unhealthy foods to children. To me, the issue is deeper than the obvious. It is the risks associated with the diet sodas. The water is a wonderful idea! Aspartame is considered to be about 200 times as sweet as sugar. It is calorie free. Aspartame in reality is a poison... [more...]