Gretchen Becker makes me laugh. In her January 13, 2009 article, "Suggestions for Obama" she listed 10 satirical tips the new president could take in tackling the broken healthcare system in America. However, the one that almost made me fall of my chair was the 8th.
I happen to look at a few reactions to the article and, not surprisingly, there were others who got the same belly jolt from the author's suggestion that the new American President should... well, here is what she wrote:
"Crack down on drug dealers. By this I mean pharmaceutical companies who make obscene profits on their drugs. Open Big Pharma Rehab Centers, where they could sit around in encounter groups explaining why they need so much money." - See Ten Health Policy Suggestions for President Obama.
Of course, as a part of the pharmaceutical companies' target market we have to consider "sleep" as synonymous with "death" here. We may laugh at Gretchen's suggestion to Mr. Obama, but this is a very serious joke that I wish would come true yesterday!
The drug companies are reaping exponential profits every year while those who are taking their drugs are dying more and more. Look at heart disease - the number one killer, yet the statin makers, by their influence, are able to pin the high cholesterol (price) tag on nearly everyone who walks into a doctor's office. Why fuel the irony any longer? It's time for a change. It's time they get a taste of their own medicine.
I prescribe the "economic" statin - an overdose, actually - for all of Big Pharma. That will shut down the profit-raking liver of the drug companies. And I hope there will be no "bail out" package for that kind of business. Yet, just thinking of it, you realize that to sink these huge ships takes lots and lots of economic statin - after all that bounty they have been collecting from us over all these years, it will still require an overdose even during a big recession!
And again, Gretchen Becker's article reminds me of another piece of satire written back in 2004 by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor, called the "The top ten reasons why the U.S. needs more pharmaceutical companies." (See that article at: http://www.naturalnews.com/002042.html). The NaturalNews editor asked the question, "without the pharmaceutical companies, what would all the doctors do for work?"
I have an answer; a serious suggestion, actually. Doctors could do more preventative care. We would then become the healthiest nation on the planet, instead of winning the title for the most Over-fed but Under-nourished Western World contestant every year. America is technologically superior in the medical field, but it does not show in lifestyle disease prevention. We win on the back end - in the remediation category.
Ask any one... our hospitals can take a heart attack or stroke victim and do wonders, prolonging life and collecting a fortune for services such as multiple bypass surgeries and post-surgery medical care. But we fail to prevent even the children from becoming obese! Shame.
So Big Pharma, may your statin production slump to the dust. May your "obscene" profiteering operations go belly-up. May you never be bailed out. May Gretchen's eighth wish come true in 2009. And finally, may America become the leader in preventive health care and then clean the environment of your toxic ashes.
Cholesterol is important for vitamin D synthesis. Sunlight causes cholesterol under the skin to form vitamin D.
