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Quotes about Medicaid from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"About 20 to 2c percent of Hopkins emergency room patients are uninsured, and another 1 c to 20 percent are "underinsured," which means they are on medicaid or a private plan that barely covers the hospital's expenses. Caring for the poor is part of the hospital's mission, but it comes at a cost. The cancer center, by contrast, lures a better-insured clientele, in part because the disease itself is most common among Medicare recipients." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"By the end of six months, the doctor had written fifty-three Neurontin prescriptions for medicaid patients, most of them for uses the government had not approved. Franklin said he found that many physicians did not question even the flimsiest or most reckless claims made by the company or the physicians they hired. Everyone—both doctors and the company's employees?seemed entirely comfortable with what was going on. "I underwent a stunning revision of my beliefs about the medical profession," Franklin later recounted." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "In Iowa, the cost of prescription drugs for patients covered by medicaid had surged by almost 25 percent a year between 2001 and 2003. With medical costs rising much faster than inflation or state tax revenues, Iowa government officials had no choice but to reduce other services. At first, officials took hundreds of millions of dollars from a fund meant to help keep elderly Iowans living in their own homes rather than in nursing homes. When that wasn't enough, the state officials turned to college students." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

"After the Medicare - medicaid revision the prices of 20 most common prescription drugs was hiked up by an average of 3.7%. This goes to show that, except for some incremental chipping, federal efforts to curb pharmaceutical expense have not been successful historically. The prices of drugs for the elderly are expected to continue to rise.76 Nearly nine out of every ten Medicare beneficiaries fill at least one prescription annually. According to a Congressional Budget Office report, the average elderly patient spends $860 per year for prescription drugs." - Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.)

"He strongly suspected that Moon, Realyvasquez, and their colleagues may have been charging Medicare and Medi-Cal, the state's medicaid program, for unnecessary procedures, not to mention putting patients at terrible risk. In March, he approached a local Redding attorney, asking his advice about how to get the government to investigate the hospital and its cardiac team. The attorney, Jerrald Pickering, a longtime Redding resident who was a patient of Campbell's at the time, listened to the doctor's story for two hours before promising to look into the matter." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"One uncooperative urologist was found guilty of violating the Federal False Claims Act and sentenced to six months of home arrest, excluded from Medicare for five years, required to provide 600 hours of free medical care to indigent patients and patients covered by Medicare or medicaid, and paid fines and restitution to the government. [Journal Clinical Oncology 23: 8894-905, 2005] This mass-scale fraud has caused Medicare to downshift its reimbursement for Lupron and other cancer drugs. Many oncologists will earn 30 to 50% less a year as a consequence of the $1." - Bill Sardi, You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore (Get the book.)

"Those without insurance have to impoverish themselves so they qualify for medicaid and Medicare benefits. Talk to a hospital administrator, an insurance company executive, a state treasurer, or an HMO bean counter and they will all tell you that prescription drug expenses are busting their budgets. Or just ask your Aunt Martha or the next-door neighbor about monthly medication bills. If she has diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, allergies, and acid reflux, her monthly bill could top $600. NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR'S MONTHLY DRUG BILL* Actos (pioglitazone) for diabetes $188." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

"And clinics, health maintenance organizations, insurers, and government programs, particularly Medicare and medicaid, are struggling to keep up with prescription costs, doctor visits, and hospitalization charges for its many complications. For many people at risk, it is simply a matter of time before they are diagnosed. It is our hope that a new direction in diet and nutrition, if applied broadly enough, can go a long way toward solving these problems. This program is truly a revolution in the way we think about this otherwise unforgiving disease." - Neal D. Barnard and Bryanna Clark Grogan, Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes Without Drugs (Get the book.)

"Under US law, companies are obliged to offer medicaid the lowest prices, so both companies had reason to concoct a plan that obscured them, thereby defrauding the US taxpayer. Scrip reported, 'According to Mr Couto's testimony, Kaiser suggested a solution. Bayer would ship Cipro in the usual way but the words "distributed by Kaiser Foundation Hospitals" would be typed along with Kaiser's national drug code number rather than Bayer's number.'9 This was a fairly regular ploy. Bayer agreed to pay $251." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"In addition, a caller claiming to have private insurance was almost twice as likely to get a timely appointment as someone who said they had medicaid (63% vs. 32%). IMPLICATIONS "What we were interested in understanding was how big a role health insurance plays in patients' ability to get access to care after they leave us," Asplin says. He concludes, "Health insurance matters—that's the basic message from this study. If you are not a card-carrying member of our health-care system, you have a very difficult time getting access to care." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

"Their report, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2004, covered the medical records of more than 4,400 medicaid patients, averaging 15 years per patient. Approximately 1,475 subjects suffered cardiac arrest during the study period. When the complete medication use of each subject was analyzed, researchers came up with these results: • The rate of sudden death from cardiac causes was twice as high among patients using erythromycin compared to subjects that didn't use the antibiotic." - Andreas Moritz, Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You (Get the book.)

"But Hogan's support of the drug flowchart algorithm appears to waiver when it becomes apparent that the mass-drugging plan sharply increased the state's medicaid budget. During an interview on a local Ohio radio station, WIMA-AM, Hogan had this to say about Ohio's version of TMAP (OMAP): "Frankly it didn't work very well for us and we've discontinued it...increasingly it's clear that the scientists don't have pretty good information to give the doctors about which works best..." - Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill (Get the book.)

"Because of the potential public health benefits of rapid HIV testing, the CDC and the Centers for Medicare and medicaid Services are working with other officials to make the test widely available. (See Part Four, cutting edge technologies and treatments, for details.) While some people experience a mild flulike illness within two to four weeks of exposure to the virus, it generally takes at least two to five years before any symptoms of HIV infection appear." - Phyllis A. Balch, CNC, Prescription for Nutritional Healing, 4th Edition: A Practical A-to-Z Reference to Drug-Free Remedies Using Vitamins, Minerals, Herbs & Food Supplements (Get the book.)

"In recent years, however, actuaries have increasingly warned about the rapidly rising cost of entitlement programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and medicaid, the largesse of which have grown over time. Undoubtedly, complacency has played a part. The United States has successfully weathered other so-called fiscal storms in the past. America thrived in the years leading up to 2006, even though we consumed far more than we produced and spent much more than we earned." - Michael J. Panzner, Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes (Get the book.)

"Furthermore, many insurance providers—including medicaid and Medicare—will pay for amalgam fillings but not for safer non-mercury composites, but the additional expense of composite fillings would pay for itself in the improved health of recipients, and recipients would be far less susceptible to onset of neurological diseases in later life. How Does Mercury Harm You? Mercury harms biological systems in many ways. Like its cousins, cadmium and lead, mercury greatly increases free-radical production within the cell and lipid peroxidation in the cell membrane." - Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets (Get the book.) "Medicare pays about forty cents on the dollar and medicaid about twenty cents. The paperwork necessary for these payer systems costs the doctor a large share of his income. I have dug ditches, tarred roofs, laid concrete, worked digging holes to plant telephone poles in the scorching Louisiana summer heat, and worked as a carpenter's helper in a sweltering attic, but nothing is as stressful, physically demanding, and exhausting as performing surgery. A Word About Doctors To get some idea of just how difficult it is, go over to your kitchen table and stand there for three hours." - Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets (Get the book.)

"The taxpayers of Hawaii have been swindled by certain drug manufacturers falsely inflating prices in our medicaid programs and to Medicare beneficiaries." - Lillian Roller, director of the state Department of Human Services. <•* A quick review of press releases available on the website of the Attorney General shows California: Filed a complaint accusing pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb Inc." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.) "With the FDA/Big Pharma conspiracy enforcing a monopoly drug market in the United States, and with drug companies further bilking state medicaid programs out of countless millions through fraudulent billing practices, billions of dollars are disappearing from the pockets of consumers and taxpayers. Where is all the money going? The drug companies claim the money is going to find cures for disease." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.) "GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) settled its civil liability under the FCA for repackaging Paxil (an anti depressant) and Flonase (a nasal spray) for concealed sales at deep discounts to the same large HMO and then underpaid rebates due to the medicaid program. GSK agreed to pay more than $87 million and agreed to accurately report its "best price" information to the government in the future." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.) "Massive fraud in the over-billing and price-fixing schemes used against tax-payer funded medicaid programs for pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. The continued approval, promotion and sale of drugs that drug companies and the FDA absolutely know produce extremely dangerous, even fatal, reactions in patients. Both the FDA and drug companies have been caught red-handed concealing evidence proving the dangers of many drugs." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"The AHCPR was given a new name, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and stripped of its authority to recommend payment decisions to Medicare and medicaid. When the agency's guidelines on treating acute back pain were finally published, they had litde impact on medical practice. The number of spinal fusions has continued to rise dramatically over the past decade, going up 127 percent between 1997 and 2004." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "We all wind up paying for it, as this overinvestment drives up costs for Medicare, state medicaid programs, and private insurers. Meanwhile, more than a hundred emergency rooms around the country have closed in the past decade, victims in part of rising rates of uninsured patients appearing at their doors. At hospitals that have kept their emergency doors open, administrators have not been eager to add the additional ER beds that are often so desperately needed, because that would mean caring for more uninsured (and unprofitable) patients." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "He strongly suspected that Moon, Realyvasquez, and their colleagues may have been charging Medicare and Medi-Cal, the state's medicaid program, for unnecessary procedures, not to mention putting patients at terrible risk. In March, he approached a local Redding attorney, asking his advice about how to get the government to investigate the hospital and its cardiac team. The attorney, Jerrald Pickering, a longtime Redding resident who was a patient of Campbell's at the time, listened to the doctor's story for two hours before promising to look into the matter." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Boston to sue Pfizer, which had acquired Parke-Davis, for illegal and fraudulent promotion of drugs, many of which had been paid for by medicaid and other public agencies. In May 2004, Pfizer pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $430 million in penalties. The whistleblower tactic is now being imitated around the country, fueled in no small part by ambitious prosecutors and a small provision in the whistleblower statutes that allow informants to share in the massive settlements. Schering-Plough has since ponied up $350 million. Tap Pharmaceuticals: $875 million. Bayer: $257 million." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"According to a Columbus Dispatch series titled "Drugged into Submission" that reported on the increased use of psychiatric drugs on babies; "Nearly 40,000 Ohio children on medicaid were taking drugs for anxiety, depression, delusions, hyperactivity and violent behavior as of July (2004)." The article further reported that 696 Ohio children, ranging in age from newborns to 3 years old, received sedatives and powerful, mood-altering, mental health drugs.. ."" - Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill (Get the book.)

"Bush was state governor at the time and, during his 2000 presidential campaign, boasted of his support for the project and the fact that legislation he passed had expanded medicaid coverage of psychotropic drugs.17 This latest development is an even bigger boon to companies who make antidepressants. Zyprexa, one of the drugs recommended as a first-line treatment in the Texas algorithm, grossed $4-28 billion worldwide in 2003 and is Eli Lilly's top-selling drug." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"Medicaid data), paints a clear picture of where the drugging is headed. Express Scripts reported in 2003 that in a five-year period (1998-2002) the use of antidepressants in children increased from 1.6 per 100 to 2.4 per 100—an adjusted annual increase of 9.2 percent, with the fastest-growing segment of users being preschoolers (newborns to 5 years old).." - Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill (Get the book.)

"Medicaid spending. But since this obviously isn't adequate profit for Lilly, the company managed to keep hidden for a considerable time the link that shows Zyprexa is causing Type 2 diabetes. Can you guess what Lilly's second-leading money maker is...? Surprise! Drugs for treating diabetes. Talk about CREATING a market! Of course, none of this would be possible without unknowing or unscrupulous doctors, their handy little prescription pads, and a willingness to sacrifice patient well-being for pharmaceutical profiteering." - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.)

"Jennifer Kim, an allergist at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, says that preferred drug lists and preauthorization policies, such as those established by medicaid, can definitely be a problem. "For a group of people who already have poor access to health care, this only puts up more barriers and more hoops for them to jump through to get the treatment they need," she says. The medications Kim has the most trouble obtaining for her patients are nonsedating antihistamines and Xolair (omalizumab), an injectable medication that is used to treat severe asthma, she says." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.) "THE STUDY The researchers looked at nearly 5,500 medicaid beneficiaries across the country who had received inpatient treatment for depression. They divided the people into two groups—those who had received antidepressants and those who had not. They found that children between the ages of six and 18 who were taking antidepressants were 1.5 times more likely to attempt suicide and 15 times more likely to die in that attempt than individuals not treated with an antidepressant. This trend was not seen among adults who used the drugs." - Bottom Line Health, Bottom Line's Health Breakthroughs 2007 (Get the book.)

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