America's Health Dilema

Here's a quote from Dr. Mercoa's website:

Cheat Disease by Changing Your Environment


It has become clear to many that efforts to halt the growing epidemics of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and cancer are failing.

Many experts believe a primary reason is easy access to unhealthful foods and busy lives that squeeze out exercise.

As a result, many new preventative health initiatives in states, cities and communities are being inaugurated across the United States.

On September 28, the American Cancer Society (ACS) concluded that only by creating a "social environment that promotes healthy food choices and physical activity" can the United States reduce cancer deaths linked to obesity and lack of exercise.

In response, on October 6 the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation announced an agreement with several food companies to adopt the ACS' nutritional guidelines for snacks sold in schools. Other initiatives, sponsored by government agencies, universities, or private businesses, are growing in number.

Current U.S. health spending is $2.2 trillion a year, and it could reach $4 trillion by 2015. Taking care of the sick accounts for roughly 96 percent of these costs, with only about 4 percent going toward prevention.


USA Today October 18, 2006



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Dr. Mercola's Comment:


USA Today ran a week-long series on what to do about America's out-of-control health care costs, and they featured experts suggesting more natural solutions. The problem is growing, and the facts are so compelling that even the CDC's director of prevention and health promotion can't ignore them, saying that:

"Two-thirds of the deaths and 80 percent of the cost of health in this country are associated with chronic disease. This country is dramatically moving in the wrong direction."

Why is this important to know?

Well, let me tell you. Our current system is really good at ACUTE care but, as you can see from the conservative estimates of the CDC, that is not what people are dying from.

So when you apply the ER drug/surgical model to chronic disease you have an unmitigated disaster that dramatically exacerbates the problem.

And it's getting worse.

In 2001, fully half of all bankruptcies were the result of medical problems and most of those (more than three-quarters) who went bankrupt were covered by health insurance at the start of the illness. That's 700,000 U.S. households devastated by medically related bankruptcies, with more than 2 million people affected.

But some are taking steps to turn this around, using the only method that will work -- preventing people from getting ill in the first place. In urban Philadelphia, researchers from America and the UK have joined in a social experiment with a huge medical upside:

Offer easy access to healthful foods to an urban neighborhood where little to no options currently exist, except for processed, fast and trans-fatty foods.

This experiment has nothing to do higher insurance premiums or newer, even more expensive and dangerous drugs, and everything to do with the real heart of the health care conundrum. It's all about trading a dangerous cure-based mentality fueled by unnecessary toxic drugs and procedures that may kill you for one focused on treating the true causes of disease safely and naturally.