Make America Healthy Again - from 2017

Can we do it this time?

I wrote these two articles for The Tenpenny Report in 2017 - and I sent them to the White House via the USPS. The numbers are worse now than they were 7 years ago. America needs a Health Revolution for sure.

If Trump wins, I will appeal to RFK Jr. about getting a position on his team. We can’t make America Healthy until we eliminate the pediatric and adult vaccination schedule.

(This is long - I hope you will read it all. Both have been updated slightly for clarity.)

Part 1: Make America Healthy Again, An Open Letter to Pres. Donald Trump

January, 2017

Dear President Trump:

I am a big fan and worked diligently to support your election. Not only did I financially contribute to your campaign, we promoted your work and actively campaigned against your competitor. We grew my Facebook page to more than 200,000 followers, most of whom support your MAGA agenda, Make America Great Again, especially your willingness to question vaccine safety.

But to Make America Great Again, we have to Make America Healthy Again.

What is happening now – with the Repeal and Replace of the Affordable Healthcare Act – will not move the needle to help Americans be healthy, meaning to be robust, productive and active without swallowing a handful of daily pharmaceuticals.

Something has to change.

For all other industries—automotive, energy, financial—you met with the CEOs, industry leaders, and experts to listen to their suggestions on how to solve their industry’s problems. Before a new ACA Platform can be finalized, you need take on this behemoth medical delivery system. It is very complex to understand being outside looking in. After 32 years as a practicing physician, and about half of those years as the Director of an Emergency Department, I know first hand the problems of what we collectively refer to as Healthcare.

Mr. President, please consider these ideas. I am asking you to put them at the top of your priority list. Change the system for the betterment of all Americans:

1. Save Medicare: Start by eliminating the billions lost through fraud.

In fiscal year 2015, Medicare paid out $568.9 billion for medical services. It is anticipated that total spending on Medicare will reach a staggering $1.1 trillion by 2024 – that’s only seven years away.

Between 2011 and 2015, Medicare spending on drugs was $537 billion – more than half a trillion dollars, to medicate our seniors. Are they better off taking all those drugs?

At CMS, there is a phenomenal amount of waste. CMS and the GAO estimate that in fiscal year 2014, $59.6 billion – nearly 10% of total payments – was paid in fraudulent Medicare claims and $17.5 billion in fraudulent Medicaid claims. That’s in ONE YEAR. We must plug that hole, Mr. President – fire those who are responsible for the lack of oversight. Investigate and shut down fraudulent accounts. Simplify and streamline the billing procedures for all participants. That would immediately put more than $77 billion back into the budget for REAL changes in health.

Medicare and the Vaccine Industry.

We not only over medicate our seniors, but we also over vaccinate them, at great personal and government cost. In that same five-year time span, the US government paid drug companies and doctors $4,256,233,887 – $4.25 billion – to purchase and administer vaccines paid for by Medicare Part B and Medicare Part D.

The U.S. Government is the top purchaser of vaccines from the pharmaceutical industry. The government buys more than $1.4B worth of flu shots per year through Medicare Part B. An entire white paper can be written on the failure of the influenza vaccine to prevent the flu. But what is rarely discussed is the amount of actual harm and illness being inflicted on our elderly through this worthless vaccine. And when flu shot side effects occur, government expenses go up through outlays of through Medicare Part A and Part C. It’s a vicious cycle – and only Pharma wins.

Here’s one specific example: Zostavax. Commonly referred to as the shingles shot, this vaccine pulled in $749 million in global sales last year for Merck. Nearly 30% of those revenues ($219M) came from the coffers of the U.S. government through Medicare Part D. Quite a coup for a product that doesn’t work and when it causes harm, costs the government even more money.

Seniors are targeted to receive Zostavax and it is not a benign shot, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine:

Persons over 60 have a 36% increased incidence of serious adverse events within the first 42 days, a number determined by combining the data from FDA safety study with data from the Shingles Prevention Study. In persons over 80, the ability of the vaccine to prevent shingles, or its most serious complication, post-herpetic neuralgia, was no better than placebo. And seniors in this age group had nearly double the rate of serious adverse events in the first 42 days after the vaccination.

In fact, the Zostavax package insert gives further details:

The relative risk of dying from cardiovascular disease within 6 weeks of (ZOSTVAX) vaccination was actually 25% higher in the vaccinated group.

Does Zostavax (or Shingrix) save the healthcare system money?

The shingles shot has not lessened the burden of disease; in fact, it has significantly increased the cost of care. Prior to 1993, and during the first 5 years of using the chickenpox vaccine, the rate of hospitalizations due to shingles did not change. Beginning in 2001, hospitalizations began to increase, and by 2004 the overall rate of hospitalization was 2.5 cases of shingles per 10,000 U.S. population, significantly higher than any year prior to 2002. Hospital fees increased by more than $700 million annually by 2004; in particular, persons aged 60 years or older accounted for 74% of the total annual hospital charges in 2004.

Zostavax doesn’t work, and it’s expensive. It harms seniors and adds more cost. Currently, plaintiff attorneys are going after Merck for these travesties. Lawsuits have been filed in both state and federal courts in Pennsylvania, alleging that Zostavax has caused serious side effects, including death.

Note: Zostavax was removed from the market in June 2020 and replaced by GSK’s Shingrix, which includes the adjuvant AS01B, a combination of two substances: QS-21 (a saponin extract from the bark of the Quillaja saponaria tree) and MPL (monophosphoryl lipid A), a component found in the cell walls of the bacterium Salmonella Minnesota. Why is this foreign matter injected into humans to generate an antibody?

And Mr. President, flu shots and shingles vaccines are not the only vaccines costing the government big dollars. Treating millions of vaccine-induced side effects is a staggering cost, no doubt in the hundreds of billions, maybe more. There is a relatively simple way to assess the high cost of vaccine injuries but no one in the government – not the CDC, FDA, CBER, HHS or even the GAO – has bothered to calculate the cost of adverse reactions. Hint: this can be done using the government’s own Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) database.

Are seniors better off from vaccination, Mr. President?

Is the rest of the country?

It has become heresy to even discuss the necessity of all these vaccines, their side effects, and even their manufacturing foibles. Our public health policy must be more than high vaccination rates and low infection rates of a very short list of mostly benign infections. We have been sold a bill of goods about vaccine efficacy and the harm they are causing has been ignored.

Please fund and promote the Independent Vaccine Safety Commission, which will be headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. We need this, Mr. President, now more than ever.

2. Don’t expand the insurance industry. Completely overhaul it.

Mr. President, from the time Bill and Hillary Clinton first attempted to overhaul the healthcare industry in 1993, what needed the most attention – the most fixing – was the insurance industry. For example, if 20 people are sitting in a room and they all have insurance coverage through BlueCross/BlueShield, there can be 20 different plans. Each company has its own forms, its own criteria, with thousands of employees just to keep it straight.

Instead of expanding the bottom line of insurance companies by allowing them to market and sell their products across state lines, force them to work together to create products that help American people.The insurance system is broken and Americans are suffering because of it.Give people the option to be cared for by Integrative and Holistic health practitioners. People want to get off their drugs, but the insurance industry prohibits their options. Mr. President, instruct them to work out products that will provide coverage for health, not just for disease management.

3. Stop Feeding Pharma. Repeal 21^st Century Cures Act (H.R. 34)

The 21^st Century Cures Act (Public Law No: 114-255), was pushed through by Congress, passing 94 to 5, and signed into law on December 13, 2016, one of 72 bills that were signed by the outgoing president over three days, from December 13 to 16, 2016.

H.R. 34 is a threat to public health and once again, allows the drug companies to gorge at the government money trough. How many times is Congress going to hand the liability-free vaccine industry another free pass to make unlimited profits by exploiting the American taxpayer funds on vaccines and experimental drugs?

The 996-page Act was promoted as a bill to fund medical research and to make new prescription drugs and medical devices more quickly available. Do we really need more drugs and medical devices? Aren’t Americans becoming less healthy by swallowing more pills, being injected with more solutions, and being tinkered with new devices?

Stop Wasting Money through Discretionary Spending

The billions allocated through the Congressional budgets that go directly or indirectly into Pharma’s pockets would shock most Americans. Check out a few of these line items from the 2016 Department of HHS appropriations bill (pg. 185), one of many budgets funded by Congress each year:

• $15M – Lead poisoning prevention (isn’t lead out of most paints these days?)

• $20M – Oral health promotion (don’t most people already know the importance of brushing and flossing?)

• $3.1 – Folic acid (The connection with spina bifida prevention and folic acid has long been known. Don’t most supplements and food companies use folic acid in their products? Does folic acid need to be subsidized by the government?)

• $14M – Health Career Opportunity program (isn’t this addressed in high school and college?)

• $39.9M – Nursing Work Force Development (is this the responsibility of the federal government?)

• $59M – Rural Health Outreach (what the heck is that?)

This short list – 6 items of literally hundreds of items in the 2016 HHS budget adds up to $151,000,000 dollars. Please instruct your new director of HHS, Dr. Tom Price, to red-line the waste, line item by line item. Then you’ll have real money to spend on things that matter.

It’s a Big Swamp To Drain

Mr. President, the waste inside of Medicare, Medicaid, insurance companies and congressional appropriations will continue to soar until deep areas of the Swamp are drained. This will be difficult to do unless you get the to the root of the problem: lobbying dollars that line the pockets of those in Congress.

The combined buying power the pharmaceutical and insurance industries have over our lawmakers is staggering. According to OpenSecrets.org, these two industries spent more than $2.6 billion and $1.8 billion respectively on lobbying activities from 1998 through 2012. That is more money spent on lobbying than oil/gas, defense and aerospace sectors combined. The manipulations and additional pork bloating to the cost of healthcare by these two industries have filled hundreds of pages, in many books.

Meaningful reform will only occur when powerful lobbying firms are neutered. When is something going to be done to handcuff the drug companies and keep them out of the pockets of our government and our citizens?

Mr. President, if these three items are seriously addressed – stopping Medicare and Medicaid fraud by eliminating theft and incompetence, working to create meaningful insurance industry reform and removing the pharmaceutical industry from the money trough – America will be well on its way to being great – and healthy – again.

(again, this was written by me in 2017…)

Part 2: Make America Healthy Again, An Open Letter to President Donald Trump

At some point, we must stop tinkering with an old, broken system.

We’re doing nothing more than moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic. Isn’t the definition of insanity, Mr. President, doing the same things over and over and expecting a different outcome?

The only parties who will benefit – again – with a Repeal and Replace of Obamacare are the drug and insurance companies. Congress is reallocating funds within a broken system, a sick care system that will soon consume more than 32% of our total GDP. They seem to be obsessed with finding ways to give everyone ‘access’ to care. But what are these millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans getting ‘access’ to?

“Access” is an appointment with a physician who orders blood tests and x-rays, and then takes out a pad to write a prescription. While sometimes a medication, such as an antibiotic, is necessary, more often than not the pill merely provides temporary relief or obliterates a symptom. The underlying cause of that symptom is never identified and eliminated – so the dis-ease will continue. Over time, a second, third or even fourth medication is prescribed. Insuring this “access” comes with exorbitant costs to the people and is breaking the back of the American economy.

We have been conditioned to believe that symptom-free in the presence of a pharmaceutical product is “health” and people need “access” to these drugs.

Spoiler alert. This is NOT health. It is a temporary fix, at best. Prescription medications have no long-term solutions.

Mr. President, without restoring health, Congress and you – or the next president – will be discussing yet another health insurance crunch in only a few more years. The sooner we embrace the fact that the existing system is irreparably broken and do the hard work of creating a new paradigm around health instead of treating illness, the sooner Americans can be made Healthy – again.

Let’s start the innovations:

 1. Invite those who actually work in the medical industry to participate in the creation of a new paradigm in American Health.

The following is a breakdown of members in the 115^th Congress (2017-19) who had previous careers in healthcare:

• Senate: 3 physicians – Tom Coburn (obstetrics), Rand Paul (ophthalmology) and John Barrasso (orthopedics), and 1 optometrist

• House: 11 physicians, 4 dentists, 3 psychologists, 2 nurses and 1 pharmacist.

• Federal Government: Tom Price, MD, a former representative from Georgia, has been confirmed as the head of HHS.

Note: in the current, 118th Congress the break down is similar

• Senate: 4 physicians and 1 optometrist;

• House: 16 physicians, 5 dentists, 1 psychologist, 3 nurses, 2 pharmacists, 1 EMT

Note: Tom Price, MD only served as the Secretary of HHS from February 10, 2017, until his resignation on September 29, 2017. His tenure lasted about eight months, ending amid scrutiny over his use of private and government planes for travel. After Price resigned, Eric Hargan briefly served as Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services. Alex Azar, a Yale-trained attorney from the deep swamp, was then appointed and confirmed as the next Secretary (again, not a physician), officially taking office on January 29, 2018. Azar served as HHS Secretary until the end of the Trump administration in January 2021.

The rest of the members (in the 115th Congress) represent a wide range of occupations, including various roles in education (101), insurance agents or executives (21), ranchers/farmers (26), real estate representatives (36), the construction industry (14), car dealership owners (6) and more.

Putting that in perspective, there are 535 members in Congress. Of those, 167 members of the House and 55 senators – 41% – hold law degrees with only 25, a mere 5%, hold degrees in medicine or healthcare.

Let that sink in: Only 5% of those in Congress have any experience on what the practice of medicine is all about.

What if a group of physicians were sitting in a room, and arguing over a trillion dollar package to reform the legal system? Would they be qualified experts if they had gone through a divorce, experienced a lawsuit, participated in Jury Duty, or dealt with a parking ticket? Of course not. It would be laughable to think that doctors could reform legal processes in this country.

We are expecting a bunch of lawyers and non-medical types to create a massive new law that will somehow improve the most complex system in this country and literally impacts every citizen? Mr. President, this is not laughable. It is actually dangerous.  Can you see the disaster looming with this scenario?

2. Appoint a Medical Commission to Make America Healthy Again

Mr. President, you have met with leaders of large and small companies across diverse industries including manufacturing, technology, airlines and gas/oil. And you recently met with mainstream health physicians. This is a good start, but those discussions will contribute more of the same – more drugs, more tests, more vaccines. You need to meet with a broader scope of professionals, those in Integrative Medicine and Holistic Health, to create a new paradigm.

Those of us who are practice Integrative Medicine know the frustrations our patients are experiencing. We have first-hand knowledge about layers of waste and unnecessary regulations that inhibit our ability to get patients well. We know that health restoration methods, technologies, and laboratory assessments are not paid for any third party carrier. Our patients struggle and pinch pennies to find ways to recover and eliminate the cost prescription medications from their lives, from their family budgets.

The unfortunate truth is that the money is in the medicine, not in the cure.

Please appoint a commission of physicians, nurses, physical therapists, hospital administrators and others in the field of medicine and healthcare, such a chiropractors, naturopathic physicians and nutritionists, to find a long term solution to a HEALTHY AMERICA. Invite physicians from across the country – from cities to rural clinics; from multidiscipline clinics to solo practitioners. We have something important to contribute. We can share our vision of what A New Model for Health the 21^st Century should look.

Let’s not to discuss a new form of insurance and access to an old paradigm. Let’s discuss Health – and how to achieve it.

3. Address the two largest medical issues facing America today: Opioid addiction and Obesity.

Solving the opiate addiction crisis

Most people are acutely aware of the opiate and drug addition problem in America. And many know that it is connected to abuse of pain medications such as Oxycontin and Vicodin. We also know that more than 100 million Americans – nearly 1/3 of our population – suffer from chronic pain. The conventional medical system has limited tools to address these conditions, In fact, physicians have greatly contributed to the addiction of Americans through writing prescriptions, their primary tool for mitigating pain.

Many non-pharmaceutical solutions exist. We need to embrace them and provide insurance coverage for real solutions.

One example is acupuncture, a treatment that has been accepted worldwide for addressing a long list of clinical conditions. The positive effects of acupuncture on opiate addiction have been investigated in many clinical trials with a moderate degree of success. This treatment is simple, inexpensive and relatively non-invasive. It can even be administered in a group setting. Acupuncture should be primary tool in the treatment of both chronic pain and drug addiction.

Conventional medical doctors routinely disparage chiropractic, a therapy they really know little about. There is a large body of science that concludes chiropractic treatment can improve health and eliminate pain. When insurance companies and Worker’s Comp limit the number of visits to 10 per year, patients who still have pain have nowhere to turn but to legal pain medication and illicit street drugs.

These are only two of many low-cost treatments that need to be maximized. What if these two modalities were only 30% effective? That would mean 30 million Americans – a staggering number! – have found relief and can return to a productive life and away from harmful, addictive opiates. Would that not be worth it?

Solving the obesity crisis

Obesity is one of the biggest drivers of chronic illness and healthcare costs in our country. According to StateofChildhoodObesity.org, obesity issues can cost the country from $147 billion to nearly $210 billion per year. In addition, obesity is associated with job absenteeism and lowered productivity, costing employers at least $506 per obese worker per year. Obesity contributes to hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and chronic pain in the knees, hips and back, as well a long list of secondary conditions that cost billions.

The math speaks for itself:

“A 2008 study by the Urban Institute, The New York Academy of Medicine and TFAH found that an investment of $10 per person in proven community-based programs to increase physical activity, improve nutrition and prevent smoking and other tobacco use could save the country more than $16 billion annually within five years. That’s a return of $5.60 for every $1 invested. Out of the $16 billion, Medicare could save more than $5 billion and Medicaid could save more than $1.9 billion.”

And that was in 2008 – imagine the human and financial costs today, more than a decade later.

Here are some simple solutions to incentivize weight loss and lead to a healthier America and a healthier workforce:

• Give a tax or HSA credit for providing proof of walking 10,000 steps per day (all FitBit and similar technologies can print a report).

• Give a tax or HSA credit for certifying to be within 10 pounds or 10% of one’s ideal bodyweight at the time of filing taxes.

• Give a tax or HSA credit for proof of use of a gym membership.

• Allow a tax deduction for home exercise equipment.

• Allow a tax deduction for fees paid to a personal trainer.

• Allow a tax deduction for a lifestyle and/or nutrition coach. Most people today do not know how to transition from a junk food diet to one of healthy fruits and vegetables. With personal education, personal transformation can occur.

• And while we’re focusing on important health issues, give a tax or HSA health credit for sustained smoking cessation, which can be verified by a urine test.

By rewarding health and solving these two issues with health credits and tax deductions, we could go a long way toward Making America Healthy Again.

Mr. President, we need a drug-free, healthy American workforce. We have been coerced, manipulated, and saturated with advertisements to make us believe that being symptom-free in the presence of drugs is healthy. We have been badgered into believing that being vaccine-free should be a crime. What if we created a system where American workers and families were robust, productive, and active without taking a handful of daily pharmaceuticals? What if, over the next four years, we collapse the lion-share of the existing system and build a new model that would restore health and truly Make America Healthy Again?

If you want Repeal and Replace, why not change it all?

Stop trying to “fix” a broken system. Mule-kick the old model off the cliff. Let it fall apart. Let it implode. Then pick up the pieces that have real value and rebuild it from the ground up. You would do that in real estate; why not do it in healthcare?

You’re a brave, visionary man, Mr. President. There’s another side to this story that needs to be told. Connect with your base. Hear what restoring health should be all about.

Let’s Make America Great – and Healthy – Again.