© By Peter Barry Chowka

(November 15, 2008) On November 1, 2008, in the closing days of the campaign, I wrote about Election 2008 and the possible end of alternative medicine. In light of the results of the voting three days later, I would posit that the end of alternative medicine in the United States is not only possible – it is now highly probable.

In reality, alternative medicine – health care practices that rely on non-toxic, natural, traditional, and/or innovative methods and that represent true alternatives to the dominant mainstream, top-down, conventional allopathic model – has been skating on thin ice for some time. The turning point against it began seventeen years ago, with the creation of the Office of Alternative Medicine in the Federal government, and the migration of alt med to an insidious hybrid called CAM – complementary alternative medicine. Today, while CAM or “integrative/integrated medicine” may be flourishing, true alt med is increasingly hard to find and is approaching unavailability.

This trend, I predict, will accelerate under the presidency of Barack H. Obama and the strengthened Democratic Party majority in the Congress

“Reforming” health care in the U.S. (i.e., expanding the federal government’s role in regulating, mandating participation in, and paying for it) was a major part of Obama’s and the Democrats’ platform.

One week after Obama’s victory over Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by 53-46%, there were numerous indications that Obama and his party are preparing to move ahead vigorously on their intention to change health care to a much more controlled, government-centralized model.

As Lou Dobbs reported on his nightly news program on CNN on November 13, 2008:

President-elect Obama has repeatedly said affordable health care is a top priority of his presidency. Democrats in Congress are wasting no time putting forward their own proposals. But as Kitty Pilgrim now reports, all of these health care plans come with a multibillion-dollar price tag at a time when government funding is being stretched beyond its limits.

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On the campaign trail, Barack Obama made a personal pledge to fix the nation's health care system. . . Obama, true to that pledge, has ranked health care high on his list of priorities, third after the economic crisis and energy independence. But his own party is already proposing solutions. Democratic Senator Max Baucus announced a health care plan quite similar to Obama's but would require all Americans to be covered.

The health care proposal by Montana Democrat Sen. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, unveiled on November 12, 2008 requires that everyone in the country purchase conventional medical insurance, with no opting out. During the long campaign, Obama said that he did not support mandates except for all children in the United States (forcing parents to buy insurance for their children or having the government pay to insure children if the family makes below 400% of the official poverty income level). But in the past (2003), and as recently as August 2008, Obama indicated his preference for a single payer system – the most intrusive and draconian government-centric model for facilitating the delivery of health care.

The Baucus proposal arrived amidst reports that influential ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) is working quietly but persistently behind the scenes to have a comprehensive government health care reform proposal ready to unveil to the new Congress next January. Kennedy, diagnosed with brain cancer earlier this year, typically a terminal diagnosis with long term survival unlikely, reportedly hopes that universal health care will be the legacy of his 46 years (and counting) reign in the US Senate. It is expected that Kennedy’s plan will involve either mandates or a single payer system – both of them not allowing anyone to opt out.

No Exit

One obvious question regarding mandating participation in a government-run or –overseen health care delivery system involves enforcement and penalties. In Massachusetts, the state that has tried mandating conventional health care insurance (it went into effect in 2007), the enforcement mechanism involves the state tax collection agency (The Massachusetts Department of Revenue, or DOR). Basically, the most private and personal data about everyone residing in Massachusetts, including their health care records, their income, and so on, has been merged, with the DOR now in the driver’s seat. The amount that Massachusetts residents have to pay for their mandatory health insurance (and penalties and fines if they do not kowtow to the government’s requirements) depends on their incomes, assets, etc., as determined by a new health care bureaucracy (the “Commonwealth Connector”) that uses financial data from individuals’ income tax returns. The Massachusetts mandate model is a prototype of a variety of proposed federal plans all of which would use the Internal Revenue Service for enforcement purposes.

By the way, as I have noted in numerous articles over the years, government run health care in general, and the Massachusetts model in particular, have little if any role for alternative or complementary alternative medicine. And even if they did, alt med (in the form of “CAM”) would be subsumed under the dominant conventional matrix and true, primary alt med would quickly be relegated to the memory hole.

In California, the nation’s largest state, both Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrat-controlled legislature, mirroring the bipartisan wave that established government health care in Massachusetts, have proposed universal health care coverage and draconian schemes for enforcing the government mandates.

The Schwarzenegger administration considers putting teeth in its plan to require coverage for all,” reported the Los Angeles Times (April 11, 2007). “People who refuse to obtain health insurance could be tracked down by the state or a private contractor, enrolled in a plan and fined until they pay their premiums.” Schwarzenegger has also proposed attaching the wages of people who don’t buy health insurance and increasing the amount of money that the uninsured owe in state income taxes. “The proposal to locate people without insurance would use state or private databases and target those who lacked coverage for 60 days or more,” noted the Times.

Changing the name of government-guaranteed or –managed health care from “socialized medicine,” the accurate term that it was known as for decades, to the more politically correct and neutral sounding “universal health care,” has apparently done the trick. For example, an online poll promoted by the Fox News Channel program Weekend Live on November 8, 2008 posed the question “What should be the Obama administration's top priority?” Coming in at number one, even ahead of “Stabilizing the economy” (at 26%), was “Health care” at 29%. More “scientific” polls have repeatedly reported similar findings, including a CBS News/New York Times poll released on March 1 2007 that found that “Two-thirds say the federal government should guarantee that all Americans have health insurance.”

The Brothers Emanuel

One of Obama’s first appointments announced two days after he won the election suggests that his in-the-closet preference for single payer may soon be proposedOne of Obama’s first appointments announced two days after he won the election suggests that his in-the-closet preference for single payer may soon be proposed openly by the Obama Administration. On November 6, 2008, it was confirmed that Obama’s choice for White House Chief of Staff is Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL). As CNN reported, "The chief of staff is usually involved in all the major decisions that the president makes and is responsible for making sure the administration carries out the president's wishes."

The key point here involves Rahm Emanuel’s close relationship with his brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, MD. (The definitive article detailing their relationship, “The Brothers Emanuel,” published June 15, 1997 in the New York Times Magazine, is archived online at the newspaper’s “Health” section.)

Taking a more current look at Ezekiel Emanuel, as I wrote on October 15, 2008, “Ezekiel K. Emanuel, MD, PhD, chair of the department of bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, and an influential health care policy spin doctor – his brother is influential Democrat party leader Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) – wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, ‘The financial crisis and health care,’ that was published on October 12, 2008.”

According to Ezekiel Emanuel,

The US government is making a $700 billion or more bailout to avert a worldwide disaster. No surprise, health care has become a side show. Or has it? Not only does this upheaval actually make health-care reform more pressing, it makes comprehensive reform—change in the way health care is paid for and how care is organized and delivered— more realistic and feasible. . .

This financial crisis means Americans may be more willing to forgo gold-plated comprehensive insurance that covers everything with few restrictions. Under the threat of losing everything, Americans may feel content with the guarantee of a decent plan that covers cost-effective treatments with some restrictions on choice and services to save money. This should enhance the chances for a bipartisan deal on health care.

With politicians and regulators committing $700 billion in a single week, spending a few hundred billion to make the health-care system cover everyone more efficiently and at higher quality begins to look like chump change. This upfront spending can create the infrastructure—such as systematic measurement of quality and patient outcomes—for serious health-care cost savings. After the last several weeks, health-care investment appears more reliable—and politically palatable—than bailing out bankers and other gamblers. . .

In his Chicago Tribune article, Ezekiel Emanuel then endorsed the Wyden-Bennett single payer legislation, the “Healthy Americans Act” (S. 334), that has (so far) been languishing in the Congress although it is increasingly popular with the mainstream media. Emanuel: “While the financial crisis has appeared to knock health care off the national agenda, in the strange chemistry that is American politics, it may in fact make comprehensive health-care reform more politically feasible, indeed maybe even absolutely necessary for fiscal stability.”

CAM on the Obama Bandwagon, While AZ Freedom of Choice Ballot Initiative Goes Down

The victory by Obama and the Democrats and their big plans to revolutionize the nation’s health care are just fine with most people in the CAM universe. John Weeks, for example, who writes the widely read Integrator Blog, endorsed Obama on October 22, 2008: “Vote early and vote often. Vote Obama.”

Leading homeopathic proponent and author Dana Ullman, MPH, in a news release he sent to the media about a study of the statin drug Crestor on November 11, 2008, included a “prayer” at the end celebrating Obama’s victory:

Hebrew prayer of thanks:

Barack atah Illinois
Elohenu melech ha'olam,
hoo-ray p'ri ha-electoral landslide.
Amen

Matthias Rath, MD, “an outspoken advocate for patient rights and for free access to natural health worldwide,” had this to say in an “Open Letter” that he paid to publish in the New York Times on November 6, 2008:

"The victory of the movement of change in the US elections threatens the global status quo and its economic base – the oil and drug cartel. The sympathy and hope that unites people around the world with president-elect Obama poses an even bigger threat to them: a global domino effect encouraging peoples around the world to challenge these global interests."

The official Obama-Biden Web site had a Naturopaths for Obama membership blog area. Rick Kirschner, ND, author and former member of the Board of Directors of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, wrote a long piece that appeared online on November 2, 2008, “Why I Endorse Barack Obama for President of the USA.”

And so on, and so on.

But at last, one grounded and reality-based analysis of the Democrats’ victory and what it really means for alternative medicine has emerged – and although it’s a little late in coming, other than the writings and rants of yours truly it’s literally the only one of its kind that I’ve been able to find. It was contained in a press release dated November 8, 2008 written by Lee Bechtel, the national lobbyist for the National Health Federation, titled “Obama, Dingell, Waxman, Kennedy, and Durbin Have Control of Decisions That Will Impact Your Health Freedom of Choice”:

"The November 4th elections in the United States have just concluded and many people throughout the World are celebrating what they see as wonderful news. Yet, lost in the glow is the very real fact that the Congressional and Executive Branch public-policy impact of the elections will not be favorable for health freedom. . .

"The National Health Federation (NHF) is a strictly non-partisan organization, with members who are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, and Independents of all stripes, shades, and colors, and we do not take a position on any candidate for office. What the NHF does take a position on is health freedom and health-freedom policy; and what we have noticed over the many decades of our existence is the fact that the Democratic Party - all media hype aside - is the most anti-health freedom party in America. Bar none, they hate us and what we stand for."

Bechtel goes on to detail some of what the Congressional Democrats intend to do about nutritional supplements, a mainstay of alternative medicine. The outlook is alarming, and even more alarming is the head in the sand attitude of most CAM proponents, the vast majority of whom welcomed the victory by Obama and the Democrats.

Another in a long list of alarming, post-election news developments was the fate of Proposition 101 in Arizona. Prop 101 was a pro-freedom of choice, pro-freedom from mandatory government health care ballot measure. Its key principle read:

"Because all people should have the right to make decisions about their health care, no law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person's or entity's right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan.”

When the final results were posted, Proposition 101 was defeated by 0.6%, less than 11,000 votes out of almost two million that were cast.

Proposition 101, as George Will detailed in a nationally syndicated column on October 26, 2008, may have been a slim thread, but it seemed to provide the last hope to possibly stop the imminent onslaught of mandatory socialized medicine in the US – and, in this observer’s view, the terminally deleterious impacts that socialized medicine will bring to what’s left of freedom of choice in American health care and in particular the right to choose alternative medicine.

The voters have spoken. Many of them are supporters and consumers of alternative medicine, and they may be surprised in a few years by the unintended consequences of their vote for "change."

Peter Barry Chowka is a widely published writer and investigative journalist who writes about politics, health care, and the media. Between 1992 and 1994, he was an advisor to the National Institutes of Health. His Web site is: http://chowka.com