This action alert is a summary of a document prepared by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, who practices alternative, non-toxic cancer therapies in New York.  His longer essay is posted at www.dr-gonzalez.com/healthcareJan2010.htm.  Please read carefully and contact your elected representatives about the unacceptable measures contained in these bills.

Sincerely,
Sally Fallon Morell
President

The current health care legislation, both the Senate version and the earlier House bill, present enormous threats to medicine as a whole, medical innovation in general, and alternative medicine in particular.  It is absolutely critical that we all keep pressure on our elected Senators and Representatives, expressing our opposition to any of the bills as they currently exist.

They are a real, creeping danger to those who practice and benefit from unconventional medicine, since if the regulations become law, physicians may be forced to abide by stringent federal regulations regarding acceptable medical practice, and in the Senate bill, patients, under threat of financial penalties, will be forced to proceed with treatments mandated by the government.

ACTION TO TAKE
You can contact your Senators and House Representatives simply by Googling “US Senate” or, for the Representatives, “US House of Representatives.”  The sites will guide you simply to your particular elected official, and the various means of contact.  Faxes, direct phone calls, and e-mails all work.  It is important to be proactive at once.

TALKING POINTS
1.  The various health care bills all make provision for a draconian centralized group of medical experts who would decide, for each and every condition – and even for each and every patient – which diagnostic tests and which therapy the doctor can prescribe.  This presents a particular danger to those physicians practicing alternative or nutritional medicine, and the patients who seek such treatment.  In the House bill, A PHYSICIAN WHO IGNORES THE DICTATES OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE WOULD BE LIABLE TO CRIMINAL PENALTIES.

2.  The Senate bill not only includes potential rules and regulations for doctors, it creates unscientific rules and regulations for patients, to be followed under threat of financial penalty.  For example, the SENATE BILL PROVIDES THAT ALL AMERICANS WITH “HIGH CHOLESTEROL” WILL BE REQUIRED TO LOWER THEIR CHOLESTEROL TO “NORMAL” LEVELS OR FACE FINANCIAL PENALTIES in the form of significantly higher premium costs for the health care.  This opens the door to mandated blood pressure and blood sugar levels, and mandated interventions such as mammograms, colonoscopies and vaccinations.

3.  Doctors would not only take their marching orders from the state, but would also work for the state, charged as it would be with doling out payments according to its own system of acceptable medical practice and price controls.  This set-up would further discourage creative thinking, initiative and good old fashioned hard work, since doctors would no longer work for themselves.  And those doctors who work harder would not be paid more than those who work less.

4.  The proposed government-controlled health care system would prove financially untenable. The bureaucracy itself would consume enormous amounts of resources that would NOT go to medical facilities such as hospitals, or to patient care, or to medical research.  The Senate bill, if passed, would establish seventeen new major government programs, each requiring large staffs, facilities and expenditures that take money away from the actual purpose of health care reform, that is, health care.

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