The statistics on the growing epidemic of type 2 diabetes are staggering—it is now estimated that one-half of all American adults will develop the disease by 2020. Currently, one out of every five United States federal health care dollars is spent treating people with diabetes. The average yearly health care costs for a person without diabetes is $2,560; for a person with diabetes, that figure soars to $11,744.Much of that increase is related to the costs of drugs.
Conflict of Interest or Medical Fraud ?
In an article published in the September/October 2012 issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, researchers from Michigan State University observed consultations between physicians and patients that “focused heavily on” medications with little or no discussion of other treatment paths, including diet and exercise.
“Recently, there has been dramatic increase in the diagnosis and pharmaceutical management of common chronic illnesses. Using qualitative data collected in primary care clinics, we assessed how these trends play out in clinical care….(…) Clinicians focused on helping patients achieve test results recommended by national guidelines, and most reported combining 2 or more medications per condition to reach targets. Medication selection and management was the central focus of the consultations we observed. Polypharmacy was common among patients, with more than one-half taking 5 or more medications. Patient interviews indicated that heavy reliance on pharmaceuticals presents challenges to patient well-being, including financial costs and experiences of adverse health effects. (…) Factors promoting heavy use of pharmaceuticals include lower diagnostic and treatment thresholds, clinician-auditing and reward systems, and the prescribing cascade, whereby more medications are prescribed to control the effects of already-prescribed medications. We present a conceptual model, the inverse benefit law, to provide insight into the impact of pharmaceutical marketing efforts on the observed trends. We make recommendations about limiting the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on clinical practice, toward improving the well-being of patients with chronic illness.”
The patient interviews were also enlightening, as almost 70 percent said they had experienced significant symptoms of adverse drug reactions from diabetes or hypertension medications…A much higher percentage than is expressed by the drug companies.
Since 2012, things have become worse
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Causation & Discussion
The Institute’s clinical experience and research has led me to the key discovery that an individual’s development of type 2 diabetes is typically driven the SAD diet, sleep issues SNPs exposure to POPs, low AMPk, or high Cortisol from coffee and stress and the like. So taking a pill when one needs to detox or sleep better is counterintuitive
Almost every case Diabetes 2 is caused by poor diet and lifestyle choices, toxins, MB and practically no convnetional Dr any root cause analysis, let alone a holistic and nutritional protocol that care reverse the disease.
Furthermore, the one “Pill for an Ill” approach is counterintuitive…as there are at least fourl multiple causes to elevated blood sugar to rise.
Abstract
Despite a considerable investment of resources into pay for performance, preliminary studies have found that it may not be significantly more effective in improving health outcome measures when compared with voluntary quality improvement programs. Because patient behaviors ultimately affect health outcomes, I would propose a novel pay-for-performance program that rewards patients directly for achieving evidence-based health goals. These rewards would be in the form of discounts towards co-payments for doctor’s visits, procedures, and medications, thereby potentially reducing cost and compliance issues. A pilot study recruiting patients with diabetes or hypertension, diseases with clear and objective outcome measures, would be useful to examine true costs, savings, and health outcomes of such a reward program. Offering incentives to patients for reaching health goals has the potential to foster a stronger partnership between doctors and patients and improve health outcomes.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22585891
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