We are in the middle of a health care crisis, one so bad that cancer or heart disease is no longer the leading cause of death in the United States; as we have been lead to believe. In fact, the greatest cause of death in the United States is prescription drugs. That is right. Legal prescription drugs prescribed by your doctor.
This does not mean that drugs in themselves are dangerous. How many of us, like Mrs. Robinson, are mixing their medications with over-the-counter drugs, vitamins, and herbs that may prove to be fatal or at least damaging to a vital organ until a chronic disease is developed. We cannot point the finger primarily at doctors for the cause of this epidemic. The truth is your medical doctors are just as frustrated as I am with this statistic, and it is not their fault.
Whose fault is it? In all my research and in all my conversations and collaborations with other medical doctors, I have found three fundamental things causing this problem:
- The billions of dollars spent in advertising that promote drugs. This causes pressure between the doctor and the patient.
- The doctors that do not have enough time to suggest lifestyle modification, or simply ignored by the patient.
- Third-party insurance payers dictating care for their patient that make decisions based upon paperwork
