Another Shot at the Government

Two posts ago, I attacked Medicare. In my last post, I pointed out how budget cuts have all but destroyed the effectiveness of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. In this post, I’m going to talk about the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in another chapter about what happens when citizens entrust their health & wellness to the government.

There’s a great article from Men’s Health magazine posted on MSNBC health by Nina Teicholz entitled: “What if Bad Fat isn’t so Bad?” The thesis of the article is that there has never been a consensus in the medical community that high-fat diets shorten life-span and low-fat diets extend it. Much like the scientific “consensus” that humans are contributing to irreversible climate change proselytized in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” (I urge you to read MIT Professor Richard Lindzen‘s Editorial (excerpt) in the Wall Street Journal), the “consensus” surrounding the American diet is a myth. More alarming is the fact that there has never been a causal connection established between saturated fat and heart disease…and there is countless correlational evidence to the contrary.

Still more alarming: these studies have been around for over three decades and the American Medical Association disagreed with Congress’ decision to make it government policy to support the supposed “diet-heart hypothesis” in 1977. Translation: Congress chose to make official diet recommendations, for the past 28 years (a revised food pyramid finally replaced the old one), based upon dubious science. And they did it knowing full well that many, many doctors, epidemiologists, and public health experts disagreed with the decision – which would (and did) affect American diets and American health. Why did the government choose to publish an official recommended diet to Americans when they didn’t have valid scientific conclusions? One likely possibility is that they had a competing interest: American farmers.

Remember the “four food groups” and the old Food Pyramid that recommended 6-11 servings of carbohydrates each day? It’s nearly undisputed now that lots of refined starches trick the body into producing extra insulin which tells the body to store energy as fat – and eating a high calorie diet dominated by carbs , rather than fat, has likely contributed to America’s staggering obesity problem. That’s right, the official recommended American diet changed the way we ate for the past thirty years, and 2/3 of Americans are now medically overweight. Why would the government recommend a diet that, in the beginning it knew wasn’t proven and along the way knew it was just plain wrong?

Well, I didn’t know this, and I suspect few other people did: the food pyramid was published by the USDA, not the FDA. The USDA’s role is to promote American agriculture, not the American diet. Dr. Walter Willett, a renowned medical doctor, public health expert, and tenured professor at Harvard, published a book in 2001 called “Eat, Drink and Be Healthy,” that pointed out this very fact. Dr. Willett attacks the USDA Food Pyramid. “At best, the USDA Pyramid offers wishy -washy, scientifically unfounded advice on an absolutely vital topic- what to eat. At worst, the misinformation contributes to overweight, poor health, and unnecessary early deaths. The thing to keep in mind about the USDA Pyramid is that it comes from the Department of Agriculture, the agency responsible for promoting American agriculture, not from agencies established to protect our health…And there’s the root of the problem- what’s good for some agricultural interests isn’t necessarily good for the people who eat their products.”

So it’s not a stretch to say that American agricultural lobby probably influenced Congress, in the way that lobbyists are known to influence, to ignore the American Medical Association’s dissent, and promote their products to Americans for thirty years. When a government sells out, someone wins and someone must lose. American agriculture scored a bid win, and the American waistline lost big.

What point could I possibly be trying to make, besides “the government can’t be everybody’s friend?” Here’s my point: government-run universal health care would be like giving someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder a white coat and declaring that he is your family’s doctor for life. He would suffer from multiple personalities, each with different fetishes, and he would have a lifetime tenure, regardless of his level of competence. The kicker is that you would never know which personality was present when he was diagnosing your child.

Any universal health care plan by the government is forever for sale, just like every other interest at Congress’ door.  And unlike standard health insurance, the government is prone to vote the deepest pocket, regardless of whether that deep pocket represents health care, or whether it represents the National Potato Council.

Chew on that…

Read Full Post »

Who Wants the Government to be in Charge of your Well-Being?

In my last post I took a jab at Medicare for its embarrassingly compromised medical reimbursement policies. Today’s victim is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A NY Times article reports that an investigation of the FDA by its own “F.D.A. Science Board” finds it in “a crisis.”

More specifically: it’s desperately short of assets and poorly organized. It’s therefore unable to keep up with scientific advances and poorly equipped to protect public health. – The preceding comments are straight out of the article. Over the past two decades, the agency’s responsibilities have soared but its appropriations have stayed the same. Think about it. You’re a hospital administrator in a small rural town – you’re hospital has 15 beds. Your hospital is not-for-profit, and therefore your entire budget is based upon a fixed tax base that isn’t changing or increasing in value. Over a 20 year period, you must admit and treat increasing numbers of patients, to the point where you must serve 3X as many patients today than you did in 1987. But the local government has allocated new tax dollars to other projects – a new water tower, a new fire district, a public park or two – and kept your tax levy the same. Therefore you have 1/3 of the resources per patient than you did 20 years ago. So you can’ t hire additional doctors, or buy new computers, or add new beds. Factor inflation into the mix and its probably more like 1/5 the resources. All because someone at the county political district decided money was needed for other projects…projects that got that board member elected. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? This is what’s happened to the FDA. This is what happens to all government-run agencies at some point. This is what happens when elected members of government, with layers of competing interests and political agendas, are in charge of something that didn’t get a lot of press before they campaigned. It doesn’t work, and it’s embarrassing that the FDA’s computers can’t recognize road salt from table salt.

It’s embarrassing that their computer system is so old that its prone to break down when it’s needed most – like during a recent E. coli food contamination scare. It’s embarrassing that it’s 2007 and reports must still be handwritten. It’s embarrassing that the FDA’s systems can’t talk to other government systems, like U.S. Customs – so we have no idea if imported foods are safe until months after people have been consuming them.

The report concluded that the “F.D.A.’s ability to provide its basic food system inspection, enforcement and rule-making functions is severely eroded, as is its ability to respond to outbreaks in a timely manner.” Garret A. FitzGerald, a pharmacologist from the University of Pennsylvania, blamed a “cabal of Congressional majorities and presidential administrations that has serially stripped the agency of assets.”

Committees with competing interests always compromise. Stand alone enterprises with dedicated, passionate architects don’t. And some people actually want the government to be in charge of our health care…

Read Full Post »