British Expatriate Network

A problem for which, there appears to be no solution, ceases to be a problem and becomes a fact of life. There is a problem for which, I can find no solution, and so I offer it for discussion.

The old Chinese paid their doctors when they were in good health; they stopped payment when they were ill. This sent a very clear message that they wanted the doctor to keep them in good shape. Unless we belong to an HMO, we pay our doctor when we are sick, admittedly we verbalise that we are paying her to cure us, but she only gets paid when we are sick. We are telling her that, “If you want my money, you must let me get sick now and then.”

The HMO should work better because the doctor gets an annual fee to look after us; his interest is in keeping you well, the less times he has to see you the better his pay rate. This gets screwed up because his fee is reduced if he refers us to specialists, and he gets bonuses if he keeps medication to a minimum cost (some of this may have changed but it was this way for a time).

The pharmaceutical companies make most money on maintenance medications, not on cures. All of the blockbuster drugs are ones that people must keep taking. Suppose that you are CEO of a big drug company and a researcher comes to you and tells you she has found an extremely promising method of curing a particular type of cancer, one for which your company provides a good chemo medication. The humanitarian thing to do would be to proceed with it, but as CEO, your duty is to maximise profits for the shareholders. If you proceeded with the cure, you could be sued for damaging the value of the stock price.

The problem is there a way to send the correct message to the doctors and manufacturers, that we want cures; that we want to maintain good health?

Great post londonsquare. The american health system is a sham. I am self employed and for my family to get insurance is just $150.00 less than my mortgage a month.In the fifties a group of scientist did a study on earths population issues because of the baby boomers. They did graphs and research and concluded that the earths population was going to be a problem in years to come. Monkeys have been biting humans for hundreds of years AIDS was created by these scientist to help with a "solution" as is with other diseases that have been introduced with varied results. I would be willing to say this bird flu was created by these guys too.

Now to my point all these additives in food,cigarettes, milk, and the very unhealthy american lifestyle is not on accident and neither is the health care system. Health cares priorities are #1 Make money , #2 Make more money, #3 put you on pills which is more more money ,#4 oh yeah we have to take care of the patient. The answer to your question IMO is No there is nothing we could directly do to the HMO carriers to make a difference but we as individuals can make a difference in our own lives by exercising knowing what we are eating and of course not smoking and taking vitamins. Jeff Rense.com is great you would really be shocked if, you understood what was really in our food. Go organic is all I can tell you.

The answer is for states to demand good quality service from pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers. One way would be for states to purchase drugs abroad, circumventing the ridiculous costs levied here.

You should see how much lobbying happened in Oregon when this was proposed. We also have a state database where you can look up a drug and find the generic, cheaper brands of it, when a doctor prescribes you something that he's getting a bonus for.

Thanks for the complement. I don't know if you are serious with the conspiracy theories or just pulling our chains. Very few love a good conspiracy theory more than I, but it is for mental exercise only. If it looks like getting serious, i apply "Occam's razor" return to normality. If the scientists were smart enough to invent the AIDS virus, they would have been capable of a much simpler solution.

Branches of the bird flu have been mutating and or combining with human influenza for centuries. In 1918 there was a mutant variety that was a great killer. In 1957 there was a combination form that was not as virulent as the 1918 version but still offed a lot of people. There was another combinant form in 1968. These all come from the main bird flu.

There were more pandemics going back about every thirty years on average. If you apply Occam's razor, you must conclude that if there is a succession of these pandemics, any new one is most likely to have developed in the same way as th previous ones. Because most of these occurred before we even knew what a virus was, they must be naturally occuring.

That they are related is demonstrated by the fact that they have most effect on the young, the ones who were not infected by a previous visit and have no immunity to it. I don't understand why they don't make a vaccine for the 1968 or 1957 variety, they would not be an exact match but should be a great help to anyone who didn't get it first time round.

Of course. You have a complete public health care system, one that is not based on the logic of the market rather the concept of public well being. Pay the doctors a salary and like teachers let their professional ethics and practices guide them.


You make a very valid point; profit and public health are antithetical towards each other.

Thank you for helping clarify the bird flu. I do believe the AIDS thing. I have a cd of a speech by Dr John Coleman that explains AIDS and other viruses that have since been introduced with varied results. They collaborate with what William Cooper was saying ten years earlier. I wrote all that just to point out why I feel the medical field is so incompetant.Not the individuals who work there. Your everyday doctors and nurses do a great job. It's the mentality as far as accessing there serves and what we are not told about that could be harmful for our health. In essence if we were chinese they wouldn't be getting paid because we have alot of sick people. I love that philosophy pay the doc to stay well instead of to be healed. It's how it should be. We have to take care of ourselves. I remember asking our dr. about flax seed oil for my wife while she was pregeant because of the omegas which are good for the skin and brain development, and her being kind of mum not even giving an answer. Thats what begin to make me question the motivation of the medical field. Rarely,unless you have a good doc that geninunly practices to get people well will they recommend a health food store for a remedy. They all have to write prescriptions.Prime example, if arthritis runs in your family Glucosamine/Chroditin with MSM should be taken at as early an age as possible without repercussions to the taker. Rarely if ever is this ever propaly recommended, instead it's we can prescribe you a pain reliever and something to help the ALREADY damaged cartilage. Still I feel your post was great andenjoy your question as well and hope to read some other feedback to open my mind to an area I'm interested in but don't have alot of time to research.

Great thread guys, interesting reading.

I kind of work with the big pharma's and your idea is indeed correct, with the current system, there is no profit in health.
Unless they take on a "social" health care system, there will never be a incentive to have healthy people here.
I have heard people at these companies say that they(as a company) have no interest in a cure, only a relief, as that is where the money lies. A cure for aids will only bring short term income until the disease has been wiped out, then what? plus, the third world countries that have no money would demand the cure on the cheap ( to benefit mankind) again, no profit.
Dentists here operate the same principal, and it troubles me every time I go, that something else needs doing, and yes I've changed dentists several times, without finding "a good one".
I don't have an answer as this country seems to confuse patriotism with progress, until they see a better way, it will stay the same.

Perhaps we should also take into account the American mentality.

If obese they want a pill to make them thinner. Diet and exercise don't work, take too long, are not for me is the cry. Then they have surgery, liposuction.
If they suffer from acid reflux or some digestive problem linked with eating high fat food, they take a pill that coats the stomach lining and shuts off acid production. Wouldn't the easier way to be stop eating what upsets you.
If they can't sleep they take a pill, if they can't wake up from the sleeping pill, they take another pill.

It seems to me that the American public walk into a doctors office and say, here my body isn't working, give me a pill. That's the extent of my involvment and responsibility, you're the doctor, you deal with it.

When i ripped up my ankle both the docs and physios were astonished at the speed of my recovery. I actually did the exercises they gave me. They were stunned.
How many people do you know, and I'm sure we all know some, who go to the doc. get pills for some ailment. Take them for three days, start to feel better and stop taking the pills.

This instant gratification, no responsibility attitude does not bode well for anyone, especially the patient.

And as to the glucosamine/chondritin/MSM formula, my doc who's Indian, trained in the UK and India, insisted on me taking it. I'm still trying to get a pain killer from her when I get pain, but her attitude is, Examine everything you've eaten and drunk and work out what you did wrong and stop sitting about doing nothing.

The health care system here works when you need it, heart attacks, strokes and such, but over and above that it seems to harbor a lot of docs who sit with the prescription pad counting how many more they need write for the free trip to some sunny spot.
It's also one of the safest investments I'm told.

Mind i would rather have this one than the old NHS. Both of us would be six feet under if we'd had to join a queue of six months to see a specialist. We paid, we got seen, what could have taken months took days. And being Brits we still grumble. roll

Annie, they have that mentality because the system they exist in, feeds that mentality.
How much money would the likes or Merck or Roche get if the answer to indigestion was a balanced diet? It's how they have been conditioned.
I'll give you an example, one of the guys I work with went to the UK on a two week trip. He got a slight chest infection and went to see the doctor in the UK.
I got an email from him, demanding that we pretty much airlift him from the UK, because the doc said no to his request for antibiotics,lol
Said, stay in bed, keep the chest covered and take plenty of fluids!
This chap was so used to being spoon fed pills from birth, the mere thought of not having a pill for his cough, sent him into a stupa! He thought the doc was trying to make him even more ill!
Needless to say, by the time he got home, he was ok, but he went to his doc just to be safe, where he was promptly given a scrip for antibiotics....just to be sure!
It's about education and a complete change in the way the system here works, neither of which will likely happen anytime soon, as it will eat into profits!
Here's another titbit of info, drug development will no longer focus on serious cures in this country as the fear of stupid lawsuits makes the cost and risk too high...not fiction...fact.
These drugs will now be developed overseas in more "restrained" legal enviroments

[quote="vapochilled @ Sat Nov 05, 2005 659 pm"]

Dentists here operate the same principal, and it troubles me every time I go, that something else needs doing, and yes I've changed dentists several times, without finding "a good one".quote]

It's unbelievable isn't it. I've not needed any work done on my teeth for years. Get here and there's countless problems that my UK dentist must of completely overlooked. He wants me to have about $1000 worth of work done. Was my UK dentist totally incompetent? I don't think so.