225,000 Innocent American’s Killed Last Year – You Won’t Believe How…

The United States has the most expensive health care system in the world. But not only is it among the least effective, it’s also a killer.

Would you believe that doctors and hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America? Only cancer and heart disease take more lives annually (and stress drives both).

How can this be? Aren’t doctors the ones to call and aren’t hospitals the places to go when we’re ill? Perhaps so-but as medical research indicates-we do so at considerable risk.

Dr. Barbara Starfield of the John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health published her research findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), findings that show clearly that America’s health care system can be dangerous to our health. Here’s how dangerous: 12,000 people die annually from unnecessary surgery; 27,000 people from hospital errors; 80,000 from hospital infections, and 106,000 people from drug side-effects. This sad state of affairs costs the American taxpayer $77 billion annually.

Drug Side Effects Are A Scandal

You’ve seen the TV ads right, for drugs for make believe diseases like “erectile dysfunction”. At the end of the ad there’s sweet music in the background while someone tells you if you have an erection for more than four hours go to your nearest hospital. More seriously, listen to the side effect warning for drugs that include liver failure, heart failure and stroke, among others. Well these “side effects” as they are euphemistically called-actually happen. And they do kill people in significant numbers.

The drug side-effect deaths are especially scandalous because drug companies throw a ton of money around to gain influence over doctors, universities and even the FDA. They do this to make even more money selling Americans drugs, dangerous drugs they often don’t really need.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the drug review process does not ensure that harmful medications won’t be approved for public consumption. The approval review for new drugs cannot be trusted when the reviewers are being paid by the companies making the drugs. These same companies spend billions of dollars marketing and promoting their drugs to physicians, physicians who too often fall prey to the marketing hype or to the financial rewards they get from a company for prescribing its drugs.

Greed and Manipulative Marketing

The drug company Pfizer, for example, was forced to pay $425 million plus in 2004 to settle unfair marketing charges. Pfizer marketed the drug Neurontin, by, among other things, flying medical doctors to high end resorts and paying other physicians to ghostwrite articles hyping the drug.

Even more worrisome is that Dr. Starfield cautions us that her findings are very conservative because they involve numbers from “in hospital” patients only. Moreover, her figures are “death only” statistics; they don’t include a tally of people who’ve been harmed or disabled, in or out of the hospital, while under medical care.

Protect Yourself-Take Action

The good news is that you can take steps to protect yourself from becoming a health care statistic. First you need to stop thinking of your physician as Yoda-as some all knowing being whose advice you can passively follow. Many physicians are outraged at what’s going on in medical care today, and they are in the front lines to change things. Such physicians welcome patients willing to actively inform themselves. The internet offers good sources to gather information about our medical concerns. A useful one is the Consumer and Patient Health Information Section at http://caphis.mlanet.org/consumer/.

Many hospital deaths typically result from errors of commission, things that should not have been done but were done; or errors of omission, things that should have been done but weren’t done. Hospital workers are typically overworked and so prone to make errors.

Make Sure You Have an Advocate When You Move Into the “Sick Care System”

It’s a good idea to have a friend or family member serve as your advocate while you’re in a hospital, an advocate who stays with you and protects you against errors by asking firm questions and settling for nothing less than good answers. You and your advocate should also work to make sure you get in and out of a hospital as quickly as possible. The best way to avoid hospital based infections, infections that are especially strong and dangerous, is to get out of a hospital quickly.

The fact is that we don’t have a health care system-we have a sick care system. We get tested and treated only after we’re ill. The system does little to help us prevent illnesses before they happen. And very often we get too much very expensive testing and potentially dangerous treatment, including drug treatment.

You should know why you’re being tested and for what, and you should understand the reasons and risks for any treatment prescribed to you.

Here’s Your Best Protection

Your best protection against doctor and hospital errors is to stay healthy. Don’t imagine your doctor will be able to help you at all times, and don’t follow her like a sheep. Be active in safeguarding your health. You probably won’t live long and well unless you do.

Most importantly, you need to learn how to get free from stress.

As the World Health Organization declared, stress is the #1 health problem in the entire developed world. Stress hormones put you at great risk. They drive heart disease, including sudden death and stroke, as well as cancer, diabetes and other serious illnesses. Stress hormones also trigger anxiety and depression. Because your doctor gets most of her information from drug company reps, there’s a good chance you’ll get drugged for stress related problems including anxiety and depression. Most physicians were not trained in the mindbody science needed to understand and relieve stress. Job stress can be especially dangerous.

Research also shows that you’ll stay much healthier if you walk for 20-30 minutes at least 4 times a week. It’s also important to avoid eating too many refined carbohydrate foods loaded with chemicals to enhance taste and extend shelf life. Ditto high saturated fat meats filled with growth hormones, antibiotics and fillers.

One of the most important predictors of health and well-being, and so of minimizing doctor and hospital based risks to our health, is to be happy doing what we truly want and love to do. Make the effort to avoid settling for less.

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 Dr. Jim Manganiello is an award winning clinical health psychologist, teacher and author. He’s a longtime innovator in the areas of stress, well-being, personal growth and “inner fitness”.

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