Sunday, November 26th, 2006 - There is a war on in the United States over health care. On one side is the "status quo" represented by the medical monopoly, the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance carriers, and an entrenched bureauracracy wholly beholden to, and run by, the people they are supposed to regulate.

The US system, according to the World Health Organization, is rated 72nd in quality, but number one in cost, worldwide. The "Death by Medicine" study shows that the system itself is the number one killer of Americans. The number two and three killers of Americans are heart disease and cancer, diseases which those of us outside of the "status quo" know are curable, and preventable - but those cures and preventive treatments are being suppressed by agents of the "status quo."

On the other side is a beleaguered America simply trying to find ways to survive.

(1) The medical monopoly is so evil, in itself, that medicine is no longer an honorable profession. For it isn't about helping people - it's about gouging money out of an unsuspecting public. For instance: there are five million legitimate health professionals working in the United States, three million of which are licensed by individual States, and two million of which are unlicensed. But only seven hundred thousand (14%) of those can bill health insurance, Medicaid, or Medicare for their services.

Why is that? Because the American Medical Association (AMA) has a contract with the US Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) to write billing codes (about 6,500 CPT Codes) for ALL health professionals - but will not invent codes for anyone but those seven hundred thousand medical doctors (the number one killer of Americans). This, of course, means that all four million three hundred thousand other health professionals in the US, in order to get paid, must bill THROUGH an MD using "their" codes - so that the MD gets a cut of the money (and increases the costs). There are only two exceptions - out of the approximately 6,500 CPT Codes available, there are four codes for Chiropractors to use, and one for Acupuncturists.

The rest of Tim Bolen's article is here.