A Fresh Idea in Cost Containment and Risk Management for Businesses

First from the perspective of the most educated man I’ve known: Mervyn Hardinge had three doctoral degrees, one in pharmacology, a department he chaired at Loma Linda University School of Medicine after his PhD from Stanford. Hearing my plans for wellness programs, he offered this quote:

“Every drug is by definition a poison. Pharmacology and toxicology are one, and the art of medicine is to use these poisons beneficially.” Drill’s Textbook of Pharmacology. Pharmacology evolved from toxicology, a study of how much chemical kills half the animals. Now we are doing it with humans!

“We estimated that in 1994 overall 2216000 (1721000-2711000) hospitalized patients had serious ADRs and 106000 (76000-137000) had fatal ADRs.” NIH link below.

That data is 20 years old and the serious adverse drug reactions increased 2.6-fold from 1998-2005 and the deaths rose 2.7 fold. (Archives of Internal Medicine, Sept 10, 2007.)

If that increase during a 7-year period is compounded for the 20 year period (why not– “Ask your Dr” ads are still on TV), then 2 million a year are dying from drugs “properly prescribed and administered,’ which is the definition of an Adverse Drug Reaction-not an overdose or physician error. It’s like taking Vioxx for arthritis (appropriate Rx) but dying of a heart attack.

Those figures were in hospitalized patients. How many die at home from drug reactions? 199,000 according to the Western Journal of Medicine, June, 2000. The article showed that for every death, 40 people were sick enough to be put in the hospital. Translate that to 2013, with 2 million dying from drugs, 80 million will have a drug-related hospital admission. Could one of them be your employee?

Can we stop financial loss from medical care? Yes, but we need to overcome some misunderstandings:

• Medical care is not healthcare. It’s the treatment of symptoms. Drugs don’t address the cause which in most cases is something we chose to put in our mouths (eating, drinking, smoking). The more prescriptions one takes, the worse their health becomes. National Institutes of Health

• We need medical care for serious events like cancer or heart attacks, but most problems come on gradually and would be reversible if we knew the cause. Here’s where traditional medicine fails us because medical texts are filled with conditions for which “the etiology is unknown.” Doctors fail to see what Hippocrates said: “Nature cures… Let your food be your medicine.”

• People need to know if they need a doctor. This was the intent of Blue Cross sponsoring “Take Care of Yourself,” a book written by two MDs, for subscribers, but they quit when doctor visits went up! Blue Cross wouldn’t have quit if more visits were needed to avoid serious event$.

The bottom line is, the less we see a doctor, the less we get involved with drugs that in 99% of cases are not supplying some chemical deficiency to cure us.

This author developed headaches. A neurologist who taught medical students said that diet would be a rare cause for my type of headache. I learned that he didn’t know. Most doctors don’t see a relationship of food to symptoms because of a mechanism that’s beyond the scope of this article to explain, but could do so on inquiry from employers seeking to cut medical costs by considering a wellness program.

Richard Ruhling, retired MD, MPH was Assist. Prof. Health Science at Loma Linda University, was board-certified in Internal Medicine and had Fellowship in Cardiology. His website athttp://RichardRuhling.com has video showing how bypass surgery may be avoided andhttp://LeadingCauseOfDeathPrescriptionDrugs.com has a video showing how prescription drugs surpass heart disease as a leading cause of premature death.