The health care delivery systems is a mess because of Richard Nixon.

[Ninga]

While written in 2017, this article is relevant more than ever.

http://healthoverprofit.org/2017/03/19/for-profit-health-care-used-to-be-illegal/

In 1973, Nixon did a personal favor for his friend and campaign financier, Edgar Kaiser, then president and chairman of Kaiser-Permanente. Nixon signed into law, the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, in which medical insurance agencies, hospitals, clinics and even doctors, could begin functioning as for-profit business entities instead of the service organizations they were intended to be. And which insurance company got the first taste of federal subsidies to implement HMOA73 … *gasp* … why, it was Kaiser-Permanente! What are the odds? It’s all right here to read for yourself.

And to perfectly cement HMOA73 as the profiteering boondoggle that it actually was, the law Nixon mandated also included clauses that encouraged medical providers to not CURE afflictions, but to PROLONG them by only treating the symptoms. There’s no money to be made in CURING sickness. But the sky’s the limit when it comes to forcing people to endure repetitive doctor visits, endless (and often useless and redundant) tests, and … of course … let’s not forget the ever-increasing demand for American-made prescription drugs!

-snip-

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. And people wonder why US healthcare costs twice per capita of other countries & not as good results.

[pangaia]

2. "There's no money to be made in CURING sickness." Boy that says it all..

Read THE CHINA STUDY.

Toward the end, I believe, it delves into the crooked cancer research at the Roswell cancer center in Buffalo...

I forget the details but -- not nice...

[Act_of_Reparation]

6. Unfortunately, what is says is "Most people don't know much about medicine"

There is money in curing disease. We've already cured hundreds of them.

If there's going to be a cure for cancer, it is going to be through gene therapy. And there's a shitload of money in that.

[pangaia]

8. Non that I think about it,

the issue the China Study was discussing I think was finding the actual CAUSES of cancer...
and in the case of The China Study-- meat was a big, big one..

So, finding the causes of cancer, or any other disease, was not profitable..

[Act_of_Reparation]

10. I don't mean this as disrespect, but you really don't know what you're talking about.

Pathogenesis is a huge area of study. The NIH alone pumps millions and millions of dollars into pathogenetic research. It's being studied. Constantly. By many hundreds of researchers.

No one can tell you what causes "cancer" because there are literally thousands of varieties of cancer and they're all caused by different things. And the "cause" is rarely single-factor. We're talking about extremely complex interactions between environment and individual genomes. There are many variables to consider, and we don't currently have the technology or the understanding to account for them all.

The direction we seem to be going is personalized medicine. That is, medicine tailored to your personal genome. It shows quite a bit of promise in preventing certain types of cancer, or at least catching them early, but the problem is there isn't currently enough hard drive space on planet earth to handle all of the required data.

[pangaia]

11. No disrespect taken, :)))

On even FURTHER thought-- it WAS just about the relationship between meat and some cancers.
And at the end of the book there was some reference about people at the Roswell center hiding the findings or some thing like that..... and the inference was that issue of there not being a profit in finding causes, etc etc..

"No one can tell you what causes "cancer" because there are literally thousands of varieties of cancer and they're all caused by different things."
I certainly understand that..

For what it is worth I had diffuse large B-cell lymphoma 5 years ago....


Anyway, I just saw some rebuttals of the whole thesis... So you're probably right -- I have no idea what I am talking about... or maybe just a tiny bit..?

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Ninga.

[Ninga]

4. Taxpayers have been snookered into believing that Health Care for All is not doable.

But until and unless we talk about it honestly, it will continue to be viewed as radical.

The direct result of Nixon's Health Maintainence Act of 1973 was to create the lucrative and rich medical doctor class. This also resulted in kicking lots of Americans to the curb.

Once the gloves came off, health care rushed to be a for profit business.

[Jose Garcia]

5. Was this bill actually so diabolical, considering Ted Kennedy introduced it?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Maintenance_Organization_Act_of_1973

[Hoyt]

7. Few are interested in the truth, but thanks for posting.

[elleng]

9. Yes, and most of us are uninformed about this, think it's NORMAL that

'medical insurance agencies, hospitals, clinics and even doctors, could begin functioning as for-profit business entities instead of the service organizations they were intended to be.'