Tucson, U.S.A. — The United States is forfeiting a half century of leadership in medical care and medical research and development, writes orthopaedic surgeon Lee Hieb, M.D., in an article in the winter issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

“We are rapidly throwing it all away as we spiral ever downward into a “vampire economy”—an economy so overtaxed and overregulated that it is sucking the lifeblood out of its productive citizens, she writes.

Hieb undertakes a diagnostic examination of the medical economy, and features the following findings:

• There are 140,000 pages of regulations pertaining to Medicare, compared with a “mere” 82,000 in an impossibly complex tax code.
• Today, 49 cents out of every dollar is spent by government. In 1920, only 10 cents was spent by government, and 90 cents privately. Even in 1947, after World War II and the Marshall Plan, only 20 cents of every dollar was spent by government.
• Businesses are organized into cartels. Some are favored by government, so that profits are retained privately, but losses are shared by taxpayers.

The diagnosis, Hieb writes, according to the Austrian school of economics, is that we have a classic fascist economy. According to Lwewellyn Rockwell, “Fascism is the system of government that cartelizes the private sector, centrally plans the economy to subsidize producers, exalts the police state as the source of order, denies fundamental rights and liberties to individuals, and makes the executive state the unlimited master of society.”

Hieb’s description of the economy comes from the title of Guenther Reimann’s 1938 book, The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism.

“The frontispiece of Reimann’s book is a pictorial representation of what it took a car manufacturer to get 5,000 tires for his autos. After 6 months and numerous encounters with boards, chambers, secretaries, ministers, councils, and commissars, the company received 1,000 rubber tires and 4,000 ersatz tires, at a 200% increase in price.”

Hieb compares this with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), although the FDA takes 15 years to approve a drug, not just 6 months.

When F.A. Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom in 1928, 55 percent of the German economy was controlled by the government, and their military expenditure was 10 percent of their budget. Today in America it is estimated that 45 percent of our economy is controlled by the government, and our military consumes 21 percent of the national budget.

Hieb explores the moral hazards of dependency on government money, and warns physicians: “We must never put ourselves in such financial dependency on the government that we are willing to compromise Hippocratic principles of ethical patient care.” Independence, she writes, is the “garlic necklace.”

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties, founded in 1943, publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

The article U.S. Medical Care Resembles “Vampire Economy,” Surgeon Writes appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Washington, U.S.A. — In an engaging new historical book published by APHA Press, “The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History” recounts the chronology of efforts to reform the U.S. Health System through the lens of political cartoons published as early as the 19th century through passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Co-authored by American Public Health Association Executive Director Georges C. Benjamin, MD; medical historian Theodore M. Brown, PhD; Susan Ladwig, MPH; and Elyse Berkman, “The Quest for Health Reform” adds narrative to more than 100 years of selected caricatures, extending from famous 1870s editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast — who drew the elephant that remains a symbol for the Republican Party — to modern artists such as Mike Luckovich, who parodies U.S. Presidents Harry S. Truman, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

“I’ve always appreciated how editorial cartoons can tell a story so succinctly, in a way the written word cannot,” Benjamin said. “Health reform in America has repeated a cycle of themes, falsehoods and criticisms. The imagery in this book explains how these beliefs and ideologies evolved over time with sentiments that words struggle to convey.”

The cartoons show the evolution of American health reform ideologies, specifically concentrating on leading political figures and institutions. Recognized events throughout U.S. History are chronicled throughout the book, including the American Medical Association’s critique of “state medicine” in the 1920s and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act in 2012.

Notable editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press provided a foreword for the book and is one of five Pulitzer Prize winners whose works are featured, including Nick Anderson, Luckovich, Joel Pett and Matt Wuerker.

“You see, unlike most journalists, we cartoonists aren’t held to the same standards of objectivity and impartiality. One part reporter and one part advocate, an editorial cartoonist isn’t merely an observer of the public debate, but an active participant in it, as well,” Bennett wrote in the foreword.

In the book’s preface, Benjamin described his inspiration for the book as a moment he sat in the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute in New York City — where former President Franklin D. Roosevelt began conceiving the Social Security Act of 1935. At the time, Benjamin was serving as the Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health at Hunter College.

“The Affordable Care Act was in its earliest stages of implementation and I was concerned that people did not seem to understand what the benefits were, but, most importantly, I was often surprised to hear people refer to health reform as though it was a new idea. I thought we needed a new way to tell the story,” Benjamin said.

For book ordering information, visit http://www.aphabookstore.org/.

The article The Quest for Health Reform: A Satirical History appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.