humongous profits 3/19/2017 0 Comments   by E.L. Christianson Jr. In the most general of terms, most people who become doctors and nurses do so with the intention of helping people.  In those same general terms, most people who go into business, do so with the intention of making money. Among those people who want to make money, an unknown percentage, are those who will stop at nothing to make the most money it is possible to make given the circumstances they are facing at that very moment. One could categorize business opportunities accordingly, for example military profits clearly go to those who don't allow death and destruction to stand in the way of making money.  While, on the other hand medical profits... It becomes deceptive at this point.  Even if one is not a doctor or a nurse, medicine needs others to fill in the gaps.  Medicines and medical equipment are required.   Administrative skills are necessary.  There is a space in the medical field for almost every skill and talent imaginable.   There should be reasonable rewards for everyone's contribution. And then there are the crooks and quacks... those whose only ideals are self-gratification at the expense of anyone and everyone who can be taken advantage of.  They use language to confuse, legislation to institutionalize, and bribery to over-come resistance.  They are in every ancillary field of medicine - medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, research - and they dominate the totally unrelated field of 'insurance'.  When making comparisons to health-care in other developed, industrialized countries it is abundantly clear that medical outcomes are less effective in the United States and at far greater cost.  An honest look at American health-care reveals the major problem... the crooks and quacks have taken control of our medical systems... and that's the truth !!! 'Egregious, Immoral, and Should Be Illegal' quotes from MedPage Today's sources​ by MedPage Today Staff - October 14, 2016 ​"EpiPen is no more a preventive medicine than appendectomy." -- F. Perry Wilson, MD, of Yale University, on Mylan's attempts to have its anaphylaxis medication qualify for first-dollar insurance coverage. "A number of years ago, these concerns were dismissed, but now they're being taken more seriously." -- Zaven Khachaturian, PhD, editor of Alzheimer's & Dementia, on the importance of subjective memory complaints in seniors. "If 'a calorie is not a calorie,' and sugar is detrimental unrelated to its calories, then funding of these organizations by soda companies is egregious, immoral, and should be illegal." -- Robert Lustig, MD, of the University of California at San Francisco, about the pernicious nature of accepting money from soda companies. "It's important for physicians to stand up and recognize autonomy of patients on close calls, which can produce benefits and harms. These are patient choices." -- H. Gilbert Welch, MD, of Dartmouth University, on the how widespread mammography has coincided with the detection of smaller breast tumors. "An important contribution of this updated data on trends is that it gives other researchers an idea of what supplements are increasing in use. These supplements might be ideal candidates for future research, both in terms of intended and unintended health effects." -- Elizabeth D. Kantor, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, on study about dietary supplement intake trends among U.S. adults. "Babies who test positive for CMV at birth can be carefully assessed for signs and symptoms and offered appropriate antiviral treatment that can reduce the risk of hearing loss progressing -- and improve their head size growth and developmental milestones." -- Gail J. Demmler-Harrison, MD, of Baylor University about a new study recommending screening of newborns for the cytomegalovirus. "The current zero-sum game of covering preventive and treatment costs might be better addressed through rational and transformational reform of our broken health financing system, rather than by backing away from the important premise of removing financial barriers to access to evidence-based preventive services." -- Sue Kirkman, MD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, commenting on a proposal to de-link insurance coverage from recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. "This carefully conducted study adds to the growing body of evidence that the absolute level of dietary protein intake negatively correlates with metabolic health, particularly glucose control, independently from total caloric intake and even body weight." -- Adam Rose, PhD, of German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, on a study examining the effects of a high-protein diet. "Is this a game changer? I think it will be. We now have data from two large randomized clinical trials, providing level 1 evidence in support of this strategy." -- Stephen R.D. Johnston, MD, of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, commenting on a trial showing improved outcomes in metastatic breast cancer with CDK4/6 inhibitors. "I appreciate that's very soft and vague, and people may come to very different conclusions." -- Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, of Barts Cancer Institute in London, describing his approach to risk stratification and treatment selection for advanced hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. ​ "One of the biggest barriers is the name Obama and [post-election] he won't be around to kick around anymore." -- Joe Antos, PhD, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at George Washington University, explaining that a lot of the resistance to Medicaid expansion is symbolic.