The amount of money people spend on health care in the United States is likely to double over the next 10 years - from $2.1 trillion to $4 trillion - according to a new report published in an online edition of Health Affairs. The report was authored by a team of economists, statisticians and actuaries from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

What you need to know - Conventional View

• Currently, approximately 16 cents of every dollar earned in the United States is spent on health care, according to 2006 estimates. The report anticipates that this will rise to 19.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2016.

• Report co-author John Poisal, deputy director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, attributes this growth to an aging national population.

• While health spending continues to grow, the report found that it is growing less rapidly than in previous years - at a rate of 6.8 percent of the GDP, compared with 6.9 percent in 2005.

• Spending on prescription drugs is expected to grow by approximately 8.6 percent annually, to a level of $500 billion in 2016. This is more than double the 2006 amount.

What you need to know - Alternative View

Statements and opinions by Mike Adams
• U.S. citizens get the worst health care bargain in the world: They spend more on health care (or sick care, actually) than any other nation, yet rates of chronic degenerative disease also remain higher in the U.S. than anywhere in the world. Clearly, the U.S. sick care system does not work.

• The real reasons behind rising health care costs in the United States are the continued disease mongering push by Big Pharma, the monopoly price fixing on medications by drug companies (supported by the FDA), the utter unwillingness of medical authorities to teach disease prevention to the population, and the continued assault on inexpensive alternatives to drugs such as nutrition, herbs and natural therapies.

• Skyrocketing health care costs are bankrupting the U.S. economy and forcing businesses to shut down or move overseas. Half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical bills. The sick care industry seems bent on leaving Americans bankrupt and living in a state of ongoing disease diagnosis and "management" rather than teaching people how to actually prevent disease.

The closer you look at conventional medicine, the more you realize just how much it's based on quackery. From the exaggerated claims of drug advertisements (which imply that swallowing patented chemicals will solve your life problems) to the absurd pro-drug, anti-nutrition regulatory proclamations by the FDA, the modern U.S. "sick care system" has become the laughing stock of the world.

Americans pay, by far, the highest fees in the world for health care services, and yet we simultaneously suffer the highest rates of degenerative disease in the world. Conventional cancer treatments, which essentially involve varying degrees of poisoning patients with either toxic chemicals or deadly radiation, have barely altered the survival rates for cancer in three decades. Heart disease rates continue to rise, diabetes is now an epidemic, and yet the drug companies, mass media and FDA increasingly promote new fictitious diseases in the hopes that they can sell even more dangerous prescription medications to people who actually don't need them.

Now here's the funny part in all this: Desperate defenders of conventional medicine -- with all its toxic chemicals, drug-induced deaths and fraudulent science -- have the gall to call natural medicine "quackery." Anyone who promotes good nutrition through supplements, vitamins or herbs is labeled a "quack," and anyone who dares question the sanctity of the cult of pharmacology is discredited, attacked and sometimes even arrested and jailed. (See my documented history of armed FDA raids against alternative doctors and vitamin companies in my book Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them.

It's all so hilarious that it makes you wonder how the so-called "quack" police can continue to peddle their pro-drug propaganda with a straight face. According to them, sunlight is useless for human health, nutritional supplements have no impact on health, stress reduction through relaxation exercises is some sort of senseless voodoo and eating 100 calories of fresh produce has exactly the same effect on your health as drinking 100 calories of a sugared-up soda (to them, a calorie is a calorie, regardless of its source). Oh yeah, and they also say aspartame and fluoride are completely safe to swallow in unlimited lifetime quantities, with zero negative health effects.

In fact, the pushers of conventional medicine still believe that the mind has no health impact on the body -- a belief that was considered modern in the 1870's, but today, in 2007, it's downright antiquated. Don't believe me? Just ask your doctor about "mind-body medicine" and watch the condemnations roll off his tongue. M.D.s practicing today literally believe the body is divided into isolated compartments that have no effect on each other; hence the dividing up of doctor duties into roles like foot doctor, ear doctor, eye doctor, brain doctor and heart doctor. What happened to the WHOLE patient? You'd never see a Chinese medicine doctor limiting their treatment to the feet. The very idea would be considered laughable.

Conventional medicine is outmoded and irrelevant to health

The entire belief system of conventional medicine truly belongs in the history books, and yet scrappy old M.D.s who probably should have retired ten years ago keep on pushing their Descartian distortions onto the world. They literally believe that if everyone in the world only had enough drugs in their bodies, we'd all be super healthy! If we just had enough vaccines to shoot up all the babies, and enough cholesterol drugs for all the senior citizens, and enough antidepressants for all the middle-aged people, we'd all be healthier, they claim. And the way to get more people healthier is to push more drug ads, to mandate more vaccinations and require more "mental health screening" of schoolchildren, just in case they might need ADHD drugs.

Sound insane? It is. And don't believe for a minute that modern medicine is based on anything resembling real science. The science was abandoned decades ago. All that's left today is an empty shell of a medical system that claims to treat patients but really just uses them as profit-generating machines to enrich some of the wealthiest corporations in the world: the drug companies. All the while, the deaths mount up... over half a million Americans killed by prescription drugs since 9/11, and the number increases by the minute. Imagine a modern nuclear missile striking a significant U.S. city, killing all its inhabitants in an instant. That's what pharmaceuticals have done to Americans over the last five years. The casualties of Big Pharma in just the last five years are now ten times larger than the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. And that statistic, by the way, comes straight from the Journal of the American Medical Association, which studied deaths caused by prescription drug side effects.

Conventional medicine is dangerous to public health

Today, the sick care industry is a deadly industry mired in dishonest advertising, corrupt regulators, brainwashed doctors, suppression of alternative medicine and always power, money and greed. It has become such a complete joke that modern medicine is actually harmful to the public. In other words, Americans would actually be far healthier if all the M.D.s, drug companies and FDA bureaucrats suddenly disappeared tomorrow! Pharmaceutical use would plummet, side effects would vanish, rates of fictitious disease diagnosis would drop to zero, and America would be a healthier, happier country. Our sick care system is, bluntly stated, keeping us all sick.

Doctors, of course, always talk about their evidence. "Where's the evidence that nutrition has any value?" they ask, as if drug companies would suddenly fund randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled studies on minerals that can't be patented. And yet their own medical journal evidence, to which they impart impressive degrees of reliability and stature, is almost entirely based on fraudulent science, designed specifically to achieve a statistical "success" using any means necessary: fudging the numbers, removing samples that don't fit the desired curve, burying trials that showed negative results, confusing correlation with causation and a hundred other devious tricks. The medical journals themselves, in turn, are financially supported by drug company ads, and they continue to publish studies secretly authored by the drug companies themselves (while utterly failing to disclose blatant conflicts of interest).

The so-called "evidence" supporting conventional medicine and the use of most pharmaceuticals, it turns out, is almost entirely fictional. It's as if tens of thousands of people stood around and agreed to pretend they were conducting real science, pretending to "search for the cure," pretending to regulate drug companies at the FDA, pretending to dispense medicine at the local pharmacy and pretending to be doing it all for the public good. It's all a grand pretending act -- a great hoax on the American people.

Of course, the quack defenders of conventional medicine strongly disagree with this -- and that's all part of their pretending, of course. It's their role to disagree with anything that challenges the status quo. Their jobs and egos depend on it!

Why the status quo must be defended

Natural health is a huge threat to conventional medicine. If the American public learned the truth about nutrition, herbs, sunlight, acupuncture, superfoods and other naturopathic modalities, they would drop their drugs in a minute and pursue the safe, natural and non-patented therapies from the world of natural health. And that's precisely what Big Pharma cannot allow to happen. So drug companies continue their campaigns of influence, corruption, buying off the mainstream media and controlling the curricula at medical schools. The American Medical Association, which has been suppressing alternative medicine for literally decades, is perhaps the most visible defender of the drugs-and-surgery approach to sick care, but even the AMA is now increasingly being seen as hopelessly irrelevant and outdated.

The future of health will not be found in chemotherapy, pharmaceuticals or unjustified surgical procedures. It will be found in prevention, where people are taught how to prevent cancer, diabetes, heart disease, depression, kidney stones, osteoporosis and thousands of other health conditions to which conventional medicine has assigned names. Disease prevention is the key to a healthy nation and, indeed, a healthy world. And it is precisely "prevention" that the sick care industry is opposed to. If diseases are all prevented, where will they find paying customers? Preventing disease is the fastest way to bankrupt Big Pharma.

Natural News

All of a sudden, everyone's talking about health care reform in the United States. From corporations like Wal-Mart to the newly-elected Democratic majority in the House, it seems that everyone -- business, government and the public -- recognizes our health care system is broken. And it is widely recognized that it needs to be fixed. But so far, nobody in any position of power has offered a plan that would actually make Americans healthier and therefore prevent disease. Prevention isn't even on the negotiating table.

Sure, there are lots of so-called "reform" schemes being tossed around, but if you examine them closely, you'll find they're all just financial shell games that pass the buck on who pays for a diseased population. Our health care industry, you see, is really a disease management industry, and it's based on maximizing profits while keeping the American people in a state of chronic degenerative disease while pushing drugs, surgery and other treatments that do nothing to address the causes of poor health in the first place. Nobody is teaching disease prevention. Nobody in power has a plan for actually making Americans healthier. What we need in the U.S. is genuine health care reform legislation.

You know, the kind of legislation that essentially eliminates the sick care industry (conventional medicine) and starts giving Americans the information and resources they need to actually prevent disease in the first place. And since any real progress in health care legislation is nothing but a pipe dream (there are way too many jobs and investors tied up in the continued diseasification of the American people to expect any real reforms), I thought I'd offer my own version of that pipe dream for your general amusement. So what follows is a list of health care legislation reforms that Congress should pass, but won't. And why won't they pass these?

Because too many powerful corporations and influential non-profit organizations actually depend on diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart disease for their continued existence. America has become a disease economy that needs to keep the disease racket running just to post decent economic activity gains. And no politician who wants to stay in office will dare recommend that Americans should actually be taught how to stay healthy and prevent disease. A healthy population would devastate conventional medicine, the cancer industry, drug companies and health care jobs. (See my popular fable, Welcome to the Town of Allopath for a humorous look at this conundrum.

#1 End patent protection for genes, seeds and medicines

Medicine today is a for-profit industry. And issued on these things anyway? Why should medicine be owned by corporations and not the people? Why is 20 percent of the human genome now "owned" by corporations, making reproduction (as in having children) a violation of patent law? part of the problem is that there's just way too much money to be made (or, extracted, actually) from patients by selling them patented pharmaceuticals at monopolistic prices.

If oil were priced like most prescription drugs, gasoline would cost you over $28,000 per gallon. But somehow, we're all told the drug companies need this money to "invest in more cures" which, of course, will be sold to us at even higher monopolistic prices. To end this profiteering, disease-mongering madness, all you have to do is end patent protection for genes, seeds and medicines. By what madness were there ever patents I say we take the profits out of medicine and end the intellectual property monopolies that have enabled disease mongering and the hyping of patented chemicals over every other form of medicine. Genes, seeds and medicines should not be patentable. They should belong to everyone.

And if you're wondering where all the medicine would come from if patents were abolished, the answer is that all the medicine we need already exists in nature. One acre of rainforest contains more medicine than all the drug companies in the world, but those medicines are never promoted because they can't compete financially with patented synthetic chemicals. Take away the patents, and all medicine becomes open source. Suddenly real medicine is accessible and affordable to everyone. (It's far safer medicine, too. Herbs are orders of magnitude safer than prescription drugs.) And what about all those greedy corporations who would lose billions from lost revenues?

Think about it: Pfizer, Monsanto, Merck, Eli Lilly... would anybody really mind these greedy profiteers going out of business? We'd all be better off if these corporate monstrosities were put out of business anyway. It is in society's interest to eliminate these corporations that harm our health and enslave the population in a medical racket that does nothing to enhance health, abundance or quality of life.

#2 Ban aspartame, water fluoridation and mercury fillings

You probably know the stories on aspartame, fluoride and mercury fillings by now. These are known toxic substances that are not only toxic to the humans who consume them but also to the environment. Mercury fillings, for example, currently release 34 metric tons of toxic mercury into the environment each year. That's about as much as all the coal plants in a sizeable nation, yet the EPA pretends mercury fillings have no environmental impact whatsoever.

Aspartame, too, is a known toxic substance that's well documented as a neurotoxin. And fluoridation? Well, let's just say that once you realize where the "fluoride" really comes from (it's a toxic waste chemical scraped off the emissions scrubbers of coal-fired power plants), you start to understand the magnitude of the fluoridation scam.

Any genuine health care reform should start with one simple principle: stop poisoning the people. Sorta simple, isn't it? Too simple for politicians to grasp, of course, especially when they're confused by all the special interest groups screaming at them. So don't expect any real action on protecting the American people from known poisons in the food, water and dental industries.

Democratics and Republicans, you see, don't really fight over whether the American people should be poisoned or not. They simply fight about who should be in power while the poisoning takes place. Both parties ultimately support the powerful corporations that put them into office in the first place.

#3 End FDA corruption and radically reform this criminal agency

Really cleaning up health care requires some courageous action against the criminals running the Food and Drug Administration. Aside from blatant conflicts of interest, the FDA has been caught red handed burying negative drug study trials, colluding with drug companies to approve known dangerous drugs, whitewashing scientific data to appease Big Pharma, censoring its own drug safety scientists, conducting armed raids on vitamin shops in order to intimidate natural health industry proponents, and far worse. See my new book, Natural Health Solutions, to read the full story on the FDA.

In my perfect world, the top FDA criminals get arrested, charged and convicted of their crimes against humanity. That's unlikely to happen, however, since corruption and influence runs deep in Washington. So I'll settle for major reforms that overhaul the agency and take the politics out of a department that was supposed to be protecting the public health, not corporate profits!

#4 Require open source publication of all clinical trials, even the negative results

Well here's an idea: let's end the secrecy of clinical trials and let the public -- and the medical industry -- see what really happens when thousands of people are dosed up on synthetic chemicals. The truth about clinical trials for prescription drugs is that most trials are a sham. The numbers and conclusions are almost universally fraudulent. They're designed to get the drug approved by the FDA for marketing, not to actually determine any level of safety of efficacy for the public.

You see, virtually no drugs are tested in combination with other drugs. Nor are drugs tested for sufficient time to determine their long-term risks. And even the trials that are completed are cherry-picked by their sponsors to drum up the most favorable results possible. This, the FDA claims, is the "gold standard" of drug safety. Which is why, of course, over 100,000 Americans were killed by prescription drugs last year alone.

To help solve this little problem, I say we make all clinical trials open source. Free the data. Let the public and the medical community read for themselves what the results are... for the "good" studies and the bad ones, too. Actually, one organization is already making great strides towards open source published studies. Check out the Public Library of Science journals, which, as far as I can tell, are the only honest medical journals in the industry.

#5 Ban direct-to-consumer drug advertising

Drug companies whooped and high-fived each other when they convinced the FDA to legalize direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising in 1997. It didn't take much convincing, actually, since the FDA guys were all getting drunk at the same party. Since then, consumers have been walloped with mostly false advertising touting fictitious benefits for dangerous drugs. And, of course, the advertising worked: Tens of millions of Americans marched into their doctor's office and began asking about a long list of drugs they saw advertised on television by healthy-looking actors who never even took those drugs in the first place.

Direct-to-consumer advertising is the bread and butter of drug company profits today. Without it, drug sales would plummet and the number of Americans killed by drug-related heart attacks, strokes, traffic accidents and suicides would fall sharply. That's why Big Pharma has to keep the media racket going. It also helps get them lots of positive media coverage, given that their huge advertising budgets pay the overhead for major TV stations, newspapers, magazines and, of course, medical journals.

The U.S. remains the only advanced nation in the world short-sighted enough to allow drug companies to advertise directly to the public. The rest of the world has figured out that drug ads really aren't "public education campaigns" as the drug companies claim, and are, in fact, promotions. But here in the U.S., that simple, obvious fact somehow escapes the discerning observation skills of the Food and Drug Administration.

If we really want to protect the U.S. population from the fraudulent advertising, pharmaceutical quackery and disease mongering of the pharmaceutical industry, it's time to re-ban direct-to-consumer drug advertising. As a bonus, we'll never have to hear the phrase, "anal discharge" mentioned again during a television ad.

#6 Stop junk food and soda advertising to children

Here's sort of another obvious one: outlaw the predatory marketing of junk foods, candy and sugary beverages to children, many of whom are already headed for a life of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. But wait: the soda companies say sugary drinks have nothing to do with obesity! And, better yet, the American Diabetes Association claims there's no link between sugar and diabetes! (Not sure how they can still say that one with a straight face, but they somehow manage it.)

Before nutritional insanity turns the entire nation into a flock of drooling, sugar-addicted trolls, it's time to put some common sense back into the kinds of messages we allow to be broadcast to our children. Perhaps, given that diabetes and obesity are now epidemic among teens, we should stop persuading children to drink and eat the products that make them diabetic and obese.

I know, it makes wholly too much sense to be adopted by Big Business (or even most politicians). They'd have to distort it in some way, like getting an ex-President (Clinton, maybe?) to sign on to some watered-down "voluntary" industry self-regulation that will ultimately prove entirely ineffective. Which is, of course, the whole point of the exercise. When Big Tobacco says it's running ads to dissuade children from smoking, do you really think it wants children to not smoke? Junk food companies work the same way. They know that the earlier they can get kids addicted to sugar, salt and MSG, the more those kids will buy of the same junk food when they grow up and have little chemically-damaged children of their own.

So I say we stop the ads. Stop promoting disease-causing substances to our children. It's only common sense.

#7 Overhaul national dietary guidelines to benefit consumers, not Big Business

As every honest nutritionist will readily admit, the dietary guidelines invented by the USDA (that's the U.S. Department of Agriculture) amount to little more than a national marketing campaign for grain processors, junk food companies, dairy farms and meat producers. It's no surprise, of course, since those are the exact same organizations that strong-armed the USDA into creating the "My Pyramid" nutritional guidelines in the first place.

Instead of, "My Pyramid," it should be called, "My Pro-Business Guide To Early Disease." The document works beautifully if you want to keep a nation obese, depressed, diabetic and diseased. But if you actually wanted to keep people healthy, you'd have to scrap the document and come up with something honest.

Come to think of it, I already did that. It's called the Honest Food Guide and you can download it free of charge at HonestFoodGuide.org. It's the only truly independent, honest food guide you'll find. I took money from no one and actually made more than a few industry enemies in publishing that guide. The dairy industry absolutely hates me. They shipped a case of spoiled milk to my doorstep. My neighbor smelled it and said, "Wow, free yogurt!" and ate the whole thing.

For the record, I do actually support the raw milk producers and consumers. And raw milk, of course, is exactly what's being targeted by health officials in the U.S., Canada and other nations. Anything that's actually healthy, it seems, gets shut down by the health authorities. Gotta keep that diseasification process moving along, don't we?

#8 Ban the use of known cancer-causing additives in the food supply

This one seems like common sense, but it's true: the U.S. government openly allows food manufacturers to add literally tons of known cancer-causing chemicals directly into the human food supply without even requiring a warning label on the products.

Sodium nitrite, for example, is added to most processed meat products. Yet it directly promotes pancreatic cancer, brain tumors, leukemia, colon cancer and probably many other types of cancer. So why does the U.S. government allow food companies to use this known cancer-causing ingredient? Because it's all about profits. The chemical boosts sales of processed meat because it turns the meat bright red. It's a color fixer. But it kills countless Americans each year from cancers that are completely preventable.

Why should this ingredient continue to be allowed in the food supply? In an honest system of food safety regulation, wouldn't you think that cancer-causing chemicals would be banned? If our national leaders really want health care reform, they should outlaw known cancer-causing chemicals like sodium nitrite, sodium benzoate, artificial food colors, aspartame, monosodium glutamate and others.

After all, we're talking about health care costs here, right? How much financial sense does it make to allow food companies to poison the population, and then have to foot the bill for treating all the resulting diseases from that poison? This financial burden really belongs with the food companies. Perhaps food companies should be required to pay the health care costs for all the consumers they harm.

#9 End censorship for nutritional supplement manufacturers

Did you know that if you're a nutritional supplement manufacturer and you actually tell the truth about your product, either on the packaging or your website, you will likely get threatened by the FDA and possibly have your warehouse raided at gunpoint? Through a massive campaign of censorship, intimidation and thuggish tactics, the FDA has managed to scare virtually all nutritional supplement manufacturers into self-censorship. So nobody tells the truth about what their products can do. You can't even claim that vitamin C cures scurvy or that vitamin D cures rickets.

(Just so you don't think I'm inventing all this information, read my book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them, which documents over a dozen FDA raids on vitamin shops, medical clinics and even a church! I even describe the FDA's effort to order to destruction of recipe books that promoted the use of an herbal sweetener.)

To better support the free flow of educational information about nutrition and its positive health effects, I say we end the censorship of food and supplement companies and let them tell the truth about their products. That's not allowed to happen, of course, because it would cause the collapse of conventional medicine. If the truth were told about the safety and efficacy of nutritional supplements, people would find natural, nutritional alternatives to drugs and surgery, and drug companies would go bust virtually over night.

So the censorship stays in place and the consumers remain ignorant of the healing power of nutrition. U.S. regulators actually require that health consumers be kept ignorant of nutritional truths. But that's only fitting, since most of the doctors in this country are similarly illiterate when it comes to nutrition.

Keep the people stupid, drug 'em up, take their cash. It's sort of a simple, but highly effective, business model, and the Big Pharma / FDA / conventional medicine racket has perfected it.

The only reason I can get away with telling you all this, by the way, is because I sell no nutritional produts. If I did, the FDA would have long since raided my home at gunpoint and forced me into self censorship. The reason I can still practice Free Speech and tell you the raw truth is because I do it all volunteer and have no financial interest in any food or nutritional products whatsoever.

Kinda neat, that Free Speech thing. Remember to thank the founders for that First Amendment. Use it or lose it.

#10 Require food manufacturers to list acrylamides, pesticides and heavy metals content on the label

Food companies don't really want you to know what's in their foods. Oh, they claim to list everything on the label, but that's not really everything. What's missing? All the stuff that kills you: the acrylamides, pesticides, heavy metals and other contaminants that are either sprayed on the foods, absorbed through the soils or created during high-heat cooking processes.

Acrylamides are cancer-causing substances created when carbohydrates are cooked at high temperatures -- frying, baking, etc. Remember those fried snack chips? Browned pancakes? Pan-fried hash browns? Yep, they all have acrylamides, and the hotter the cooking, the more you get. And don't even think about restaurant french fries that are soaked in the same high-temperature oil that was used for the last fifteen batches.

Food companies, of course, hope you never find out about acrylamides. And they sure don't want to have to list it on the label. But I say we should require them to. After all, the point of the label is to tell consumers what's really in the food, not what the food companies want us to think is in the food.

If we passed this law, freaked-out consumers would flock to the fresh produce section and begin buying up fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and other non-processed foods. And that, of course, might accidentally make them healthier.

#11 Outlaw cancer-causing chemicals and fragrances in personal care products

Here's an obvious one: Let's make it illegal for personal care product manufacturers to poison their customers. This can be easily accomplished by outlawing the use of toxic liver-damaging or cancer-causing chemicals now used throughout the cosmetics and personal care industry.

Your average perfume product, for example, contains more than twenty cancer-causing chemicals, none of which are listed on the label. Once applied to your skin, they penetrate the dermis layer and go right to your bloodstream where your heart circulates them, maximizing their potential to cause damage to your tissues and organs.

In a sane country where health really mattered, these cancer-causing chemicals would be illegal to use in personal care products. But in America today, nobody even blinks an eye (not even the one good eye they still have left) at the routine practice of poisoning customers with dangerous chemicals. And every day, consumers who don't know any better apply these cancer-causing products to their hair, skin, fingernails and hands.

#12 Launch public service ad campaigns that teach consumers how to tell the difference between healthy vs. unhealthy food and grocery products

This strategy would cost money, but it would save the nation many times its cost in reduced health care costs. The idea is to offer basic educational ads that teach consumers how to choose healthy products at the grocery store.

Why is this such a big deal? Because most consumers genuinely have no idea what's healthy and what isn't. When 7UP claims to be "all natural," most consumers believe it! When Frito-Lay prints little checkmark symbols on their products, calling their chips "Consumer smart" (or whatever phrase they use), most consumers believe that, too! Let's face it: Consumers are a gullible bunch, and they believe practically anything they're told on TV. Shouldn't we spend some time telling them how to be healthier?

How about this idea: For every junk food or soda ad a TV station airs, it should be required to air an educational, pro-nutrition public service ad in the same hour. That way, the advertising messages would at least be somewhat balanced out, and viewers wouldn't simply be assaulted by corporate-sponsored junk food ads all the time.

#13 End Big Pharma's FDA-enforced drug monopoly

Government regulators claim to support free trade in every area imaginable: corn, computers, software, automobiles and even steel. But when it comes to medicine, U.S. regulators feel they need to enforce a U.S. monopoly market that deprives consumers of choice and makes free trade illegal.

Just try to buy meds from a Canadian online pharmacy, and you'll see what I mean. The FDA practically considers you a criminal for buying drugs at cheaper prices in another country.

From the FDA to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), U.S. regulators are determined to enforce a monopoly market of pharmaceuticals -- a drug cartel. While all other citizens around the world pay more competitive prices for their drugs, U.S. citizens have been singled out as the ones who are supposed to pump up the profits of Big Pharma by paying as much as 569,000% markups on prescription drugs (that number is not a misprint). See my book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them to see even more evidence that reveals the true organized crime behavior of today's drug industry giants.

It is especially interesting that the FTC, which claims to protect consumers, has made absolutely no effort whatsoever to end the pharmaceutical monopoly in the United States. If anything, the FTC seems a lot more interested in eliminating competition to pharmaceutical companies by threatening sellers of nutritional products or alternative medicine products. Together with the FDA, they've turned the United States into a health wasteland, where consumers are forced to pay profiteering prices for synthetic chemicals that only harm their health while being denied access to the natural products that could actually save their lives.

Conclusion

While there are probably hundreds of additional ideas that would also improve the health of the U.S. population, the thirteen ideas presented here would, if enforced, probably drop cancer rates by 75% in one generation. Diabetes rates would plummet, mental health would greatly improve, birth defects would be sharply reduced and, most of all, the national health care bill would be slashed to a fraction of current costs.

And that, of course, is exactly why these ideas can never be allowed to pass. The profit-minded medical industry would lose billions. Hundreds of thousands of people who depend on the continuation of disease to provide job security would find themselves out of work. Because our national economy is so heavily invested in the business of disease, actually making people healthier would be devastating to the economy in the short term.

And so the corrupt politicians and government regulators who continue to run this country would much rather maintain the status quo -- keeping the public in a state of continued disease, with no cures available, so that all those businesses and organizations who are counting on the continuation of degenerative disease don't have to downsize.

Do not ever think that the disease epidemics sweeping our nation don't have solutions. We already know how to prevent and cure cancer, diabetes, heart disease, depression and most other degenerative diseases. The reason they are not prevented and cured is because it is not in the interests of those in power to have a healthy population. And current law, of course, unambiguously demonstrates that. The laws surrounding food, medicine, advertising, health insurance and health care are designed to keep you and your children in a continued state of disease. Most of the laws on the books today were, in fact, designed and pushed by corporations, so they serve the interests of those corporations -- and it is not in the interests of these powerful corporations to see a healthy population that avoids disease.

Understand this: Americans are intentionally kept in a state of disease precisely because that is what produces the maximum profits for the corporations who own this country. Once you realize this, you understand 99 percent of the real problem with health care. It's not about who pays, or how much they pay, or what kind of discounts can be negotiated... it's about ending the conspiracy to keep Americans diseased. Until we end the drug cartel now operated by Big Pharma and the FDA, we will never see health care reform that makes any real difference.

So when it comes to health care, don't expect any legislative miracles from either political party. Even a massive switch to socialized medicine, if it could be pulled off, is still useless unless we start teaching disease prevention. Unless you actually prevent disease and fundamentally improve the health of the American people, no structure of health care coverage will save us from a near-certain future: a mutant population, trapped in a system of disease proliferation that will ultimately cause the collapse of the U.S. economy and the end of America as we know it.

Of course, you can always "race for the cure" if you're really stupid enough to think that running around in circles, raising money for Big Pharma via a corrupt non-profit organization, is going to solve this problem. See my Race For the Cure cartoon for an illustration of this.

Without question, the healthiest people in the United States are those who operate outside the health care system. Health care reform doesn't matter to them, because they've already reformed their own health! They make informed choices about foods, medicines and exercise. They don't see M.D.s, and many don't even carry health insurance. They are skeptical, informed and healthy consumers. They're the kind of people who read NaturalNews. And it's an honor to write for people like you. You are the only hope for the possibility of a brighter future in the United States and around the world. So keep reading, stay informed, and remember to exercise your right to Free Speech on the issues you care about.

(NaturalNews) A majority of Americans age 50 and older use alternative medicines, but don't tell their doctors. That's what a survey by the AARP and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine found.

Health experts say that informing your doctor is important to prevent any conflicts between the use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) versus over-the-counter, prescription drugs and traditional medical methods.

The report said discussing everything with a doctor "allows patients and physicians the opportunity to identify CAM practices that might be beneficial and also minimizes risks to a patient from potential therapy interactions."

In a survey of 1,559 people age 50 and older, 63 percent have used a CAM.

Among that group, 69 percent did not discuss their use of CAMs with their doctor. The most popular CAMs among those surveyed were utilizing massage therapy or chiropractic manipulation, and herbal or dietary supplements. Each type of CAM represented more than 40 percent of what CAMs are used, totaling 87 percent of the whole. Other types of CAMs used included hypnosis, acupuncture and naturopathy.

The most common reason responders said talking about using a CAM never happens with a doctor is simply becaus

e doctors never ask. Other reasons include many people not knowing they should tell their doctor (30 percent), believing the doctor wouldn't be knowledgeable about the subject (17 percent) and believing the doctor would try to discourage them from using CAMs (12 percent). "The fact is, most American adults use complementary medicine.

Why? Because it's safer, less expensive and more effective than conventional medicine's drugs-and-surgery approach," said consumer health advocate Mike Adams, author of numerous books on natural health. "One reason patients don't discuss these therapies with their doctors is, frankly, that many doctors are egotistical, closed to new ideas and even downright hostile when they learn that patients are educating themselves about health, nutrition and disease prevention. Doctors are being taken out of the loop because more and more people are seeing them as irrelevant to their health."

(NaturalNews) According to a recent study, the economic strain levied on employers in the U.S. from employee healthcare costs is growing exponentially, leaving many employers scrambling to find alternatives to their present healthcare models.

The study, entitled “Reducing Corporate Healthcare Costs,” released by the Human Capital Practice of Deloitte and Touche, has found that the most common strategy utilized by employers in reigning in healthcare spending has been to pass on the costs to employees.

Employers are encouraging their employees to open health savings accounts (HSAs) into which they can deposit money towards the cost of future medical expenses.

The Corporate Healthcare Coalition is a group comprised of 15 Fortune 100 companies, Dow Chemical and Raytheon among them. Lobbyists representing the interests of the coalition have worked to pass healthcare initiatives since the group’s outset in 1993.

Health Coverage for the Uninsured Act of 2005, authored by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., introduced the concept of HSAs. “Many of our members are excited about the potential HSAs have to improve choice and consumerism among their employees,” said Andrew Mekelburg, Chairman of the CHCC and Vice President of Federal Government Relations at Verizon Communications. Between 2004 and 2005, CHCC spent $220,000 to insure the passage of the bill, according to opensecrets.org.

Another alternative to present models of corporate healthcare gaining popularity over the past few years is the on-site clinic. Employers such as Pepsi, Dow Chemical, and Raytheon offer primary care, as well as preventative health services, such as routine checkups and blood work, to employees at clinics contained within their facilities.

In limiting health care options to employees, corporations effectively reduce their insurance premiums. Many on-site clinics administer flu shots and dispense prescriptions, decreasing employee absenteeism attributed to appointments with outside doctors. Dow Chemical envisions that due to the efficiency of on-site clinics, that by 2015 there will be less than one hour of work missed to illness or injury out of every 200,000 hours of work, according to the Dow Chemical Company’s 2006 sustainability report.

"The truth is, health care costs threaten to bankrupt America's largest companies," said Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and author of "Natural Health Solutions." "And one of the reasons is because U.S. lawmakers and regulators continue to encourage a pharmaceutical monopoly, outlawing free trade and doing everything in their power to protect a profiteering system of medicine that preys upon American workers," said Adams.

(NaturalNews) The biggest threat to American's health is the U.S. health care system, according to an editorial by three cancer experts and campaigners against medical excess.

Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, author of "Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why," and Drs. Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin are all members of the VA Outcomes Group, a group of doctors, fellows and researchers who do not necessarily think that more health care means more health for Americans.

In the article, while admitting health care professionals make mistakes, the doctors say that the major threat from health care is not mistakes but a diagnosis epidemic. The motivation for this epidemic, the authors say, is likely the fact that the income of drug manufacturers, hospitals, doctors and disease nonprofits is directly proportional to the number of diagnoses made. And there are legal ramifications for not diagnosing a disease, but no such kickback exists for overdiagnosis.

The authors consider the cause of this epidemic to be what they call "the medicalization of everyday life," in which normal-yet-uncomfortable problems people experience every day are turned into diseases: Insomnia suddenly requires sleep medication, and restless legs, sadness and reduced libido are all diagnosed as real medical conditions.

The authors note that an even more disturbing trend is the overly reactive diagnosis of children, as children with chest problems are said to have asthma and unhappy children are labeled depressed, but the severity of the symptoms are rarely considered. This problem stems from good intentions, according to the authors, in which the desire for early detection in order to have the best chance of disease eradication has gotten out of control.

New technologies make the situation worse -- as they allow doctors to find traces of diseases in almost every person examined -- and the things that define a disease are also in flux. In the last few years, the "at-risk" levels for diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, osteoporosis and obesity have all dropped, some more than once. As the authors point out, this means that more than 50 percent of the U.S. population is technically diseased.

"At the extreme, the logic of early detection is absurd," they said. "If more than half of us are sick, what does it mean to be normal?"

The natural consequence of a diagnosis epidemic is a treatment epidemic, the authors warn: Not all treatments have positive effects, but almost all of them have negative side effects, some of which are not detected until years after treatment. Even when the treatments do provide some positive effects, the authors said, they are often outweighed by the side effects, and it's even worse when a "pre-diseased" or mildly diseased person is subject to treatment side effects when he or she would have otherwise experienced few or no symptoms at all.

"People need to think hard about the benefits and risks of increased diagnosis: the fundamental question they face is whether or not to become a patient," the authors said. "And doctors need to remember the value of reassuring people that they are not sick. Perhaps someone should start monitoring a new health metric: the proportion of the population not requiring medical care. And the National Institutes of Health could propose a new goal for medical researchers: reduce the need for medical services, not increase it."

While traditional dentistry focuses on oral hygiene and preventing, diagnosing and treating oral disease, cosmetic dentistry focuses on improving the appearance of a person's teeth, mouth and smile. In other words restorative, general and/or family dental practices address dental problems that require necessary treatment, whereas cosmetic dentistry provides elective — or desired — treatments or services.

Cosmetic dentistry may also provide restorative benefits. For example, dental fillings are a common procedure used to treat decayed teeth. Previously, most dental fillings were composed primarily of gold, amalgam and other materials that left visible dark spots on the teeth. Today, dental fillings may fall into the category of cosmetic dentistry, because you can select fillings made of porcelain or composite materials that closely match the color of your teeth, thus maintaining the natural appearance of your teeth and smile. Many people may choose to have their older fillings replaced with newer, tooth-colored fillings to enhance their oral appearance.

Cosmetic Dentistry Trends

Technological advancements in natural-looking, tooth-colored dental materials make today’s cosmetic dental treatments more durable and predictable than in years past. Additionally,

dentists are now using more conservative cosmetic dentistry techniques to preserve as much of your natural tooth structure as possible, depending upon your specific clinical situation. Cosmetic dentists m

ay also use such technologies as lasers in order to perform some procedures necessary for cosmetic treatments in their own offices — without the need for referrals to specialists. This makes cosmetic dental procedures such as smile makeovers more comfortable and convenient for patients, as well as helps to reduce recovery time.

Cosmetic Dentistry Procedures

Cosmetic dentistry procedures currently in use include:

• Inlays/Onlays: Also known as indirect fillings, inlays and onlays made from porcelain or composite materials are a long-lasting yet cosmetic way to provide a “filling” to teeth with tooth decay or similar structural damage. Whereas dental fillings are molded into place within the mouth during a dental visit, inlays and onlays are created in a dental laboratory before being fitted and adhesively bonded into place by your dentist.
• Composite Bonding: Chipped, broken, discolored or decayed teeth may be repaired or have their appearance corrected using a procedure called composite bonding. A dental composite material with the look of enamel and dentin is applied into the cavity or onto the surface of a tooth, where it is then sculpted into shape, contoured and hardened with a high-intensity light. The result is a restoration that blends invisibly with the remainder of the surrounding tooth structure and the rest of your natural teeth to create a healthy, bright smile.


• Teeth Whitening: Teeth whitening is perhaps the most commonly recommended cosmetic dentistry procedure. Teeth are often stained from smoking, food, drink (coffee, tea or red wine) or poor oral hygiene. Bleaching the teeth can enhance the appearance of your smile.
• Dental Veneers: Composite or porcelain laminates that are adhesively bonded to the surface of a tooth to correct and repair chips and cracks will improve a worn appearance or severe tooth discoloration. Veneers may also be recommended if you have gaps in your teeth or if you have not had success with teeth whitening.
• Dental Implants: Dental implants are artificial tooth root replacements that are used as a part of prosthetic (artificial replacement) dentistry in order to compensate for tooth loss. Often the result is not only an enhanced smile, but also a more youthful appearance, since missing teeth cause the face to collapse, making you look older.
• Smile Makeovers: Smile makeovers involve a comprehensive assessment of your smile esthetics in order to improve its overall appearance. Typically one or more cosmetic dentistry procedures, such as dental veneers, dental implants, gingival sculpting and teeth whitening, will be required for several teeth in both the upper and lower arches in order to achieve the look you want.
• Full mouth reconstruction: While consulting with you about a smile makeover to primarily improve the esthetic appearance of your smile, your dentist may discover that there is a need to provide necessary treatment to correct functional problems with your bite, muscles, teeth and bone structure. If you need full mouth reconstruction, the materials available today make it possible for your dentist to provide you with durable, functional and clinically sound treatments that also look natural.

Cosmetic dentistry offers many options for people who are unhappy with their smile. If you are one of these people, we encourage you to read our comprehensive cosmetic procedure articles to learn about the various treatments available to beautify your smile.