About the Author
Dr. Freeman L. Garrett, D.C.
Yes, I am a Chiropractor. Chiropractic is known as ‘Alternative Health Care’. Chiropractic is the second leading health care system in the world. It was never meant to replace orthodox allopathic medicine. Each system has a very important role in the health of our nation. I truly believe that a great number of my Medical friends will agree with some of the information herein that negatively affects their practice as it does mine.
This web site has absolutely nothing at all to do with Chiropractic as a health science.It has everything to do with the declining health of Americans, the outrageous cost of health care, the 47 million citizens who cannot afford the flagrant fees for health insurance and the greedy bottom feeders who enrich themselves at the expense of our health, our money and, sometimes, our life.
This site is about the facts that, although we are the richest country in the world, we spend more money on ‘health care’ than any other nation, yet we have the shortest life span and the highest infant mortality rate. In relation to all the other modern countries in the world, we are ranked at the very bottom in health care. http://www.who.int/countries/en/
In the 48 years I have been in practice, I have witnessed this downward trend in America’s health. Over the years I have seen health care go from a very personal “Doctor and Patient” relationship to an extremely impersonal “Corporation and Patient” relationship. The personal care of the ‘family doctors’ and their compassionate ‘bed-side manner’ has virtually disappeared from the scene.
In the first decade of my practice, a patient with insurance was very rare. Doctors’ fees were affordable for nearly everyone. Childbirth was about $400, appendectomy, $350, a hospital room was $100 per day. I can’t remember any news of a patient going bankrupt and selling their house because of a major illness or a 15 day stay in the hospital.
You may say that it is just due to inflation occurring over the decades. Wrong! If you look at a chart of the inflation rate over that time period as compared to the cost of health care, you will see at least a 1000 percent disparity. The money spent on heath care has risen nearly 300 percent since 1980. $740 billion in 1980 to $2.5 trillion in 2007. Wages or average family incomes haven’t even come close to keeping up. Office visits in 1960, $5 to $ 20. Office visits in 2007, $150 to $300 and upward.
Then, year by year, generation by generation, I’ve watched in sad amazement as the power was transferred from the patient to the insurance companies, the drug companies, the government and the lawyers. This transfer was, and still is being enabled by the power hungry professional politicians who need vast sums of money to remain in power.
Doctors are losing their identity. They are now referred to as a ‘Health Care Providers’ or merely ‘Prescribers’. The Doctors have also lost some of their power to diagnose and dispense medication. The ‘direct to consumer’ TV advertising by the powerful drug companies, explains the viewer’s symptoms, thus, patients are diagnosing themselves. The result? 63 percent of patients asking for a drug they have seen on TV get it. ‘Nurse Practitioners’ now play a vital role in writing prescriptions. There are plans in the works to allow pharmacists to side-step the doctor and dispense medication. Some TV ads that previously used the phrase “Ask your Doctor” are now using “Ask your Prescriber”. Your ‘Family Doctor’ has been replaced by ‘Your Primary Provider’. Patients have lost their power of choice.
There are a myriad of reasons for this dramatic change in the American Health Care System and Americans’ health. I will list a few that I think helped to escalate that change:
1. In July 1965, under President Johnson’s plan for a “Great Society”, the Medicare Law was passed against the will of the AMA. http://www.ssa.gov/history/corning.html That was the beginning of government’s intrusion into the private health care system. And then came Medicaid and circumvention of the powers of the states with the threat of loss of U.S. funds. Then came the unending, ever increasing, ever changing volumes of rules along with the accompanying mounds of paperwork. Compete Government control of the Health Care System has never ceased to expand and it never will.
2. Perhaps television. “The Great American Wasteland” http://www.quoteworld.org/docs/nmvas328.php The single thing that has had the most negative influence on Americans’ health, lifestyles and morals. People who were perfectly content with their lives before TV, were suddenly thrust into the ‘I see, I want, I need’ syndrome.’ ” I saw it on TV. I want it.” Ads for unhealthy food that helped start the ‘obesity epidemic’. Children who had loved to go outside and play, are now glued to the TV. TV has now morphed into video games that hypnotize our sedentary children. No fresh air, sunshine or exercise. Result? Childhood obesity and poor health.
3. Maybe air conditioning. Again, no fresh air, sunshine or exercise. Obesity and poor health.
4. And then. Change in the family structure. Both parents working. Single mothers. Where families used to sit down together for healthy meals, they now grab whatever is handy and easiest to prepare. Frozen processed microwave meals or, very often, ‘junk food’.
5. I have to add the lobbyists who supply the money to keep the Greedy Six in power.
6. The entities that this web site is all about, The Axis of Greed, and how these groups have changed America’s health for the worse, how they are bankrupting this country and how they are making us slaves to a dangerously dysfunctional health care system will be discussed in detail on this site.
There is no profit for the Axis of Greed in a healthy America.
Dr. Garrett