➡ The True Health Report discusses the evolution of the medical field, highlighting the shift from homeopathic and naturopathic practices to allopathic medicine, largely influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. It criticizes the current healthcare system, where doctors are paid by insurance companies rather than patients, leading to a loss of personalized care. The report suggests that this system serves the interests of insurance companies more than patients. It advises individuals to consider self-insurance as a way to regain control over their healthcare decisions.
➡ The article discusses the potential pitfalls of routine health screenings and preventive care, suggesting they may not always be beneficial and can sometimes lead to unnecessary treatments. It argues that many tests are not properly validated and can produce false positives, leading to a cascade of interventions that may not be needed. The author also predicts a future where healthcare becomes more automated, with AI and robots playing a larger role. Lastly, it emphasizes the importance of understanding and negotiating healthcare contracts to ensure you’re not agreeing to unwanted procedures or treatments.
➡ If you’re in an emergency medical situation, you have the right to get treated, even if you can’t pay or don’t have insurance, thanks to a law called MTALA. You can also reject certain parts of a contract you signed under stress after the emergency is over. If you’re having trouble with hospital procedures or being forced into treatments you don’t want, you can ask for help from the hospital’s risk management officer. They can guide you and ensure you’re treated well, as they want to avoid legal issues.

Your routine annual physical exam and lab tests. I would describe this practice as a sales model, but not something that’s beneficial for your health. This is the True Health Report, where critical appraisal fuels true freedom. The True Health Report Many of you are involved with the allopathic health system to one degree or another, and so I thought this was a good opportunity to learn more about what the consequences of that might be depending on your situation and level of engagement and where you might be led astray or where a situation might not be in your best interest.

And I wanted to do this by talking about kind of the past, present, and what I think is going to be the future of the allopathic medical model. So let me start talking a little bit about the history of medicine in the United States, and I know the history of the United States the best, but I think much of what I’m going to say is true for most of the rest of the world, especially of course the Western world, but even many of these doctrines have made their way to Eastern countries, including China.

So before really the early 20th century or late 19th century, most physicians in the United States were actually homeopaths, and second to that were naturopaths, and then there were some allopaths that were a small minority. And also in the 1800s, the field of chiropractic began to develop as well. So really, we didn’t have the kind of cut, burn, poison model of allopathic medicine at all in the nation’s history or only to a minor degree. And in the 1800s, the kind of medicines, quote unquote, that were predominating among the allopathic physicians of that day were mercurials and arsenicals.

So those were compounds based on mercury and arsenic, known toxic heavy metals. And these were used for all kinds of maladies, even childhood teething and colic. They were supposed to give mercurial pills or drops and give them basically until the child had diarrhea or vomiting so that you knew that there was enough toxicity. So these were the kind of strategies that existed. Now, when the big oil revolution occurred in energy, and we all know about Rockefeller and Standard Oil, there became the opportunity to make synthetic chemicals based on petroleum. And one of the first products was something called a new jolt or new oil that was, I believe, a type of mineral oil that was used in medicinal applications and is still used in some laboratory procedures today.

But of course, we know that the pharmaceutical industry largely came from the petroleum industry. So in order to support that at the time, Rockefeller and JP Morgan and some other of the, quote unquote, robber baron class, developed the American Medical Association and put some key propagandists in the leadership there and began to criticize those branches of natural medicine that were predominant, you know, calling them quacks, etc., and trying to claim legitimacy for pharmaceutical products. And they also commissioned a study on medical education called the Flexner Report, which essentially concluded that all of these natural branches of medicine were bogus and quackery and allopathic was the only true model.

And it revolutionized medical education in the United States, essentially causing a major shift. All those homeopathic and naturopathic schools, many of them closed, and only allopathic medical schools were getting this accreditation or approval from the AMA and even from the federal government. And this became the predominant model in terms of the type of medicine. And I call it the cut burn poison paradigm because it includes surgery, radiation is the burn, radiation therapy and poison is pharmaceuticals. Now, if we separately look at the business model of medicine, it consisted of independent doctors.

In fact, even when I was first starting out at hospitals, many of the doctors, especially in, you know, community hospitals in rural areas, they had a private practice, but they had privileges at the hospital and they had their own private patients there when they needed hospital level services. So when doctors had their own businesses and hospitals and clinics were run by doctors and nurses, they were able to, you know, operate freely in terms of setting their own prices, deciding what types of services to offer or choosing their personnel who had independent ways of doing things.

And this model, you know, allowed for a lot of freedom of thought, a lot of relationships to develop a doctor patient, and it allowed, you know, individualized medical treatment, even if it was based on the allopathic model. But that has all changed over the 20th century, the latter half of the 20th century, mostly with the advent of third-party billing, which includes HMOs or health maintenance organizations and health insurance and other, you know, so-called entitlements. And what this has done is it’s changed the whole nature of the relationship and the contract between doctor and patient by injecting a third party in there who provides the financial incentives.

So the doctors are not being paid now by their patient, they’re being paid by insurance. And that means that they are essentially have to provide insurance, what the insurance company wants, because that’s who’s paying them, and the patient is not the object of primary responsibility of the doctors. So this is, you know, why one of the aspects that of course took away the individual nature of the care, but also insurance companies actually have now specific things they want doctors to do. So they want, for example, doctors to be treating a certain portion of their patients with a certain type of drug, for example, like cholesterol, lowering medications, or blood pressure drugs, or diabetes medications, they want them to, you know, order a certain number of screening tests for certain things where there are specific interventions, etc.

And this has really changed the whole industry, because now we have as most doctors are employees, which means they’re beholden to employers, they’re not running their own business and making their own decisions. And because especially because of electronic health records, most of the medical decision making is now guided by clinical practice guidelines, which are driven by commercial interests by contracts, etc. So for example, hospitals, which would be the employer, they would have a specific formulary where they would negotiate with drug manufacturers to sell certain drugs. And those are the ones that they want you to prescribe.

Now, of course, you have the appearance of freedom to not follow these guidelines. But if you don’t, then you’re going to be reprimanded in some way, you’re going to get called in, you know, as I described to the principal’s office, but it’ll be one of those MBA types who are running the hospital or perhaps a lawyer. And they’re going to say, why aren’t you following our guidelines, we want you to be more compliant, and they may even offer incentives, or they may say, you know, your job won’t last unless you play ball.

So we have this situation, you know, who does the doctor work for? And how can we really obtain good quality care when the institutions of medicine are serving all of these other interests. So if we’re in a situation where we feel we have to have health insurance, we’re subjecting ourselves to this. So we may think that, okay, if a situation emergency arises where we really need to go to the hospital or engage this system, and there are some situations like that. And I’ve discussed them, for example, in my how to avoid the emergency department masterclass, which you can all watch for free if you haven’t already seen it, we are going to be in a position in that situation where the hospital is serving the insurance company, rather than serving us.

Whereas if we don’t have insurance, we still have the opportunity to receive this emergency care. In fact, federal law requires that these facilities take you regardless of your ability to pay and that gives us negotiating power and it makes us the direct customer so that we can receive the services that we want and need rather than services that best suit the insurance company. Now, even if you’re an employee and they have, you know, health insurance, you can legally or lawfully opt out. There are very few exceptions to this, although it’s possible that your employment contract may include a requirement.

Now, many times there may be a requirement that if you opt out of their provided insurance, you still have to provide some proof that you have your own insurance and that may, you know, be for their own liability purposes, but you can actually do this through self indemnification. And you can learn how to, you know, complete the paperwork essentially that you are self insured. So you ensure yourself and you can have an accounting ledger showing the value, even if the value is hypothecated. So you don’t have to give a bank statement necessarily, but you can create a bond, for example, for yourself or a million dollars to cover these kinds of things and have an accounting record of it, and then put it in your own certificate, which represents your self insured status.

So there are ways that are, you know, totally lawful that you can do this. In fact, even the hypothecated accounting is, is lawful and described in the federal statutes. So you can definitely learn, you know, of course, it requires some effort, but ways to protect yourself. If you do end up in this situation where you’re an employee or where you have to seek emergency treatment. Now I want to also talk about, you know, what they might call preventive care. And I’m talking about like your routine annual physical exam and lab tests, for example.

Now I would describe this practice as a sales model, but not something that’s beneficial for your health. Now, first of all, even since I was in medical school in the early 2000s, I knew at that time, I believe it was even taught to us that the benefits of an annual physical had been extensively studied and shown to not be beneficial. So why were we still doing these? And there are many reasons. In fact, a lot of times physicals are required for employment or for your children to go to summer camp or for college and things like this without any known benefit.

So what they’re really doing is they’re trying to establish risk factors for disease, which have not something that are causative, but they’re associated with the development of some problem in the future. And they’ve been, in many cases, redefined as diseases themselves, right? Like prediabetes, obesity, even high blood pressure really is technically not a disease. It’s just a response of your body to not getting enough blood to your organs and something is causing it. But this is one of the things that they want to follow. And of course, cancer screenings. Now, a lot of this is done by screening tests, but many of these screening tests are either not validated at all or not properly validated.

I did give a live stream not too long ago about diagnostic tests where I described a number of foundational problems with developing this. So for example, with respect to levels of chemicals or types of cells that are in your body, how would we actually determine what is a normal amount? And then how do they do this for these actual tests? And they use statistical models, which unfortunately don’t really capture all of the situations. And one consequence of that is that a so-called abnormal result can actually be normal. It’s just because we’ve applied a statistical model, we now see it as abnormal.

And many doctors begin treatment for situations like this where it’s really a normal result. And one of the major ways you can avoid this is by not just ordering blanket tests. Because for example, just based on a statistical analysis, if we ordered a certain number of tests, like maybe five, maybe it’s eight, maybe it’s 10, I haven’t done the actual calculation. But statistically, just by chance, one of those tests is going to have a value that would be considered abnormal, even though it’s actually normal. And this is because that individual doesn’t actually have any signs of disease, right? They’re not experiencing any symptoms, any limitations in their functioning related to health, but they’re just getting a bunch of tests that are all interpreted through statistical models.

So by chance, one of these, or perhaps more, is going to be abnormal. And then the doctor is going to take action based on that abnormality, even though it is a false representation of your health. And this is how people end up getting into the sort of landslide effect of interventions. This is well described in the birthing realm, but it really occurs in the screening realm as well. So, you know, first you have an abnormal result, and then the doctor says, well, we’re going to need to have you come back to recheck it, right? Then maybe it’s slightly abnormal again, or it’s not, and then they want to check it another time.

And eventually there’s enough abnormalities. They say, okay, now we want you to take this drug. Then you have side effects of that drug that cause another abnormality, right? And then you’re well on your way to being on eight to 10 pharmaceuticals, having surgical procedures, chemotherapy, all kinds of sequelae down the road. Now, this is also well described with psychiatric patients. And we can look at the book, for example, Anatomy of an Epidemic to learn more about how that plays out in this context. And this is an amazing sales model because essentially you have a subscription model where there’s ongoing revenue, you keep going for more and more visits over time.

So there’s more and more revenue coming in. And over time, the amount of interventions grows so that the revenue also grows, right? I mean, you have one copayment for a monthly drug, you know, it’s $10 a month. You have eight, now it’s $80 a month coming in. That’s just what the pharmacy takes in minus what they get from the insurance companies for the reimbursement. So you can see how this is a very successful business model and part of the reason why it is the biggest fraction of our gross domestic product is healthcare expenditures.

So realize that when I work with clients and do consultations and help get at what is the cause of their health problems, you know, I never think about saying, Oh, you should go get a blood test or you should go get this test or that test except for very, very unique circumstances. So some tests can sometimes be useful. Like it could be sometimes be useful to get a chest x-ray. If you think you might have a pneumothorax or there’s evidence that there might be cancer there and you just want to see, is it there or is it not there to confirm it for some reason.

So there may be, you know, times when a test could be useful, but it’s very, very rare and certainly not for general screening purposes in someone who is healthy overall. Now, I think that a lot of this is heading towards full automation and that there are going to be less and less healthcare professionals involved in healthcare. Because what I was discussing about these computerized clinical practice guidelines, which, you know, currently work kind of like this, you see a patient, you put in your little note, right, which says what the problem is, what questions they answer positively to, and what your physical exam findings are, vital signs, et cetera.

And then, you know, messages pop up. Do you want to order this test? Do you want to order this drug kind of just guiding you what to do that that’s going to be, you know, fully automated and you’re going to be put in front of a computer with AI software and it’s going to interview you. Maybe there’ll be a technician to perform parts of the physical exam and they’ll probably be robots, right? We already have, for example, like blood pressure machines and pulse monitors, et cetera. We have robotic surgery that could be done remotely.

So I think this will be automated at some point too. And then only for the most complex clinical situations will you actually engage with a human doctor. And I don’t think it’s going to take very long to get this. It’s mostly about getting people to accept it. But I believe the technology is really probably already available. So we talked a bit about the history. We talked about the business model and various aspects. We talked about the future and how technology may be integrated. We talked about screening and routine physicals. And I want to touch a little bit around emergencies.

So one of the most important things is that whenever you engage services of the allopathic system, and really even if you engage a consult with me or with anyone, that you are going to have a contract. Now, whether it’s in writing, whether it’s verbal, whether it’s through an email, all those are contracts, right? Because there is an exchange of value. You’re going to be, you know, paying in some way either through insurance or directly, and you’re going to be receiving some service information or product in return. And that is what a contract is, right? Between two parties in exchange, a value that is agreed upon.

And when you go to a hospital or a doctor’s practice, they’re going to have you sign a contract in writing, which might be a consent form, it could be a financial guarantor form, and there can be other types of forms. Even when you release records, that is also a contract. So it’s important that you read these contracts carefully and know what you are agreeing to. And if you don’t agree, realize that you can modify them and that you have that right, because there has to be what’s called the meeting of the minds for a contract to be valid.

And if you sign it without discussing it, crossing things out, or changing things, then you’re essentially agreeing to everything that’s there. So don’t make that mistake. Now, as I’ve taught before, if you’re in a situation where you’re under duress, and you don’t feel that you have the opportunity or the time to cross stuff out, to read it carefully, then you can simply sign your name and write under duress right there. You can put it in quotes, you can write it underneath right next to it. If you want to look this up in the UCC, you can write the UCC code, but this essentially makes it so that after you get your emergency treatment and whatever happens, you can go back and read the contract and say, this contract, I recision or reverse this contract because I was under duress and I would not have agreed to X, Y, or Z.

And that will be completely 100% legal and doable, and then you will not be bound to any of the terms of that contract. So make sure that you approach that situation very, very carefully. Also realize that whether you have the ability to pay or not, that federal law requires them to treat you in an emergency situation. I believe this is called MTALA, is the acronym for that law. So you don’t have to worry about bleeding to death across the street from the hospital because they won’t treat you without insurance. And then I want to give you a resource that if you are having any difficulties dealing with this paperwork, getting treatment appropriately, or if they’re trying to force you to do things that you don’t consent to, like taking vaccines or getting tested for imaginary infectious diseases, or give you drugs that you don’t want, et cetera, et cetera, that you should engage with the risk management officer for the hospital.

And they may not be available 24 hours, but they probably are on call actually. But you can definitely engage with them during business hours. Sometimes you can go through the patient advocate if you need to, or through a nursing manager to get to them. But they are the person that will help you the most because they know that they have liability if they go against you with respect to this, and they don’t want to deal with that. So they are the person that can probably help you. And in some situations that I’ve heard of where they’ve been involved, they actually give you VIP treatment.

So they will personally escort you to where you need to go in the hospital. They will brief your treatment team on how to interact with you, things like that. So they can sort of be your advocate, even though they’re really representing the other side. So I hope this is helpful to create a context and framework to reconsider exactly how you currently engage with the allopathic healthcare system and how you might engage in the future should the situation arise and will be a starting point for some further exploration and discussion about these issues so that you can better make healthcare decisions for yourself and your family.

[tr:trw].

See more of Andrew Kaufman, M.D. on their Public Channel and the MPN Andrew Kaufman, M.D. channel.