In 2003 our total national health care bill reached $1.6 trillion, approaching 16% of the gross national product. According to John Abramson, M.D. in his book Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine, "The United States spends more than twice as much per person on health care as the other industrialized nations. . . . The excess spending on health care in the United States is like a yearly tax of more than $1800 on every American citizen."

This trend is still going in the wrong direction as this 2018 report declares that healthcare spending in the U.S. is now nearly 20% of GDP, more than any other country.

In addition - and although our population represents just 5% of the world's total - more than half the total world supply of pharmaceuticals is used in the United States. An AARP survey from the Spring of 2003 showed that 75% of Americans 45 and older regularly use prescription drugs, a figure which is up sharply from 52% identified by a previous survey. (AARP magazine). A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that U.S. spending for prescription drugs tripled between 1990 and 2001 to $140.6 billion and is expected to reach $445.9 billion by 2012.

Does this mean we're healthier for it? Or are we headed toward a Modern Holocaust?

Let's look at life expectancy. If you've been listening to the news, you know that today's children will have shorter life spans than their parents. A study from 2005 predicted a reduced life expectancy among adults due to obesity. A 2015 study determined that "that the US has poorer health and shorter life expectancy than other high-income countries. We find that the US health disadvantage begins at birth, extends across the life-course, and is more pervasive for Americans living in the South and Midwest of the US. Differences in health care, individual behavior, socioeconomic inequalities and the physical environment are all likely to contribute to the explanation, yet they offer only a partial account for the pervasiveness of the US health disadvantage across the life-course and for many different outcomes." By 2016 we heard news that life expectancy for Americans declined in 2015 - "a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States."

All this despite the fact that the U.S.spends the most on healthcare as of 2017.

It may surprise you to learn that there were actually MORE centarians relative to population 100 years ago than there are today. In other words, more individuals as a percentage of population lived longer in 1900 even though average life span was shorter because of high infant mortality rates and death due to disease caused by poor water and public sanitation methods.

We might want to ask: how does the U.S. compare to other countries around the world in terms of life span?

One of the earliest tables used to rank countries in terms of life expectancy showed that the U.S. was ranked 7th out of 21 industrialized nations in 1950. By 1990 the U.S. had dropped to 18th out of the same 21 countries. And under the more recently developed system called the Disability Adjusted Life Expectancy (DALE) developed by World Health Organization scientists, the U.S. ranked 24th out of 191 countries by the turn of the 21st century. According to the director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy, Christopher Murray, M.D., Ph.D., "The position of the U.S. is one of the major surprises of the new rating system. . . Basically you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries." As of 2013, the US is ranked 51st out 220 countries by the CIA World Factbook, and spends the most on health care.

Perhaps even more ominous were the results of a study which compared 16 "health markers" considered indicative of good health between the "top" 13 countries. This study found that the United States ranked 12th out of the top 13 countries. These 13 countries, listed in order of their ranking (with the first being the best) are Japan, Sweden, Canada, France, Australia, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. In regards to separate health indicators, the United States ranks as follows: 13th for low birth weight; 13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall; 11th for post neonatal mortality; 13th for years of potential life lost; 11th for life expectancy at 1 year for females, 12th for males; 10th for life expectancy at 15 years for females and for males; 10th for life expectancy at 40 years for females, 9th for males; 7th for life expectancy at 65 years for females and for males; 3rd for life expectancy at 80 years for females and males; and finally 10th for age-adjusted mortality. (cited from Health Myths Exposed by Shane Ellison, MSc pp44-45)

NOTICE IN THIS LAST STUDY THAT LIFE EXPECTANCY RANKING IS DECLINING FOR THE YOUNGER AGE GROUPS.

SO-O-O-O . . .

WHAT ABOUT BABIES AND CHILDREN?

According to the CDC, the U.S. ranked 30 out of 31 selected countries in infant mortality as of 2005.

And there's more - about which we need to ask: How big (or small) a role do genes play in these exploding numbers?

  • 15% of live babies now born in America are born with something wrong with them
  • 100 years ago one out of every 33 people got cancer. Today, it is one out of every two – and increasing. Moreover, cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease for children under the age of 14. Further children as young a six, both male and female, are being diagnosed with breast cancer. Finally, 90% of breast cancer cases occur with NO family history.
  • Children as young as nine are being diagnosed with Type II diabetes, heretofore a condition reserved for adults over forty. This represents a fifteen to twenty-fold increase in the last twenty years alone. (The incidence of adult-onset diabetes has more than tripled in the last 30 years.)
  • Heart disease was so rare at the turn of the twentieth century that the first report of it did not appear until 1912 when Dr. James Herrick wrote about it in an article of the JAMA - after which the famous cardiologist (and personal physician to Dwight D. Eisenhower) Paul Dudley White spent the next ten years in search of it and found only three cases. By 1950, heart disease had become the leading cause of death for older adults. By 1998 a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that hardening of the arteries (termed atherosclerosis) affects about 30% of all 16 to 20 year olds, half of all 21 to 25 year olds and 75% of all 26 to 39 year olds – which means that three quarters of us have cardiovascular disease by the time we reach 40, and often do not even know it. Today, children the age of five and even younger are being diagnosed with heart disease heretofore considered a disease of “old age”
  • One in three hundred children are presently being diagnosed with autism – a mere ten years ago it was one in 10,000! (As of 2004 some areas of the U.S. show that 1 in every 150 babies develop autism.)
  • A majority of children today suffer from one or more of a whole host of maladies, everything from allergies and asthma, various digestive disorders, behavior and learning problems, and so on. Just look around.

As one example of health decline in the modern age of miracle medicine: a February 4, 2001 article in the Chicago Tribune reported that "Nearly half of Americans suffer at least one chronic disease, everything from allergies to heart disease - 20 million more than doctors had anticipated this year."

Another ominous sign: "The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data has shown that American’s lymphocyte counts are progressively going down, down, down, i.e., a steady decline in immune systems. In 1981, Dr. H.F. Pross did a study of the Natural Killer (NK) cell count of average Americans; NK cell count is measured in lytic units, or LU. The LU count was 152. In 1991, Dr. R.D. Herberman made a similar study and found the LU count of average Americans had dropped to 135. In 1997, Dr. Gerald See did another NK cell count study and found the LU count of average Americans had dropped to 108, or a 1% drop per annum since Dr. Pross’ study. A weakened immune system leads to cancer, or lowered resistance to flu, cold, infections, or the next epidemic. Official Medicine has nothing for a weakened immune system, which you don’t get from a lack of antibiotics – but you may from too many of them. . . . America faces a Health Challenge and is not prepared for it." p 398, Politics in Healing by Dennis Haley