Election 2008 and the Possible End of Alternative Medicine

© By Peter Barry Chowka

(November 1, 2008) As of this writing, the country is three days away from what will likely be one of the most important national elections in American history. There are many issues separating the candidates and their parties, as well as debates about character, associations, qualifications, experience, temperament, and so on, played out against the backdrop of a major downturn in the economy that has been the compelling lead story for the past month, fatigue with the last eight years of a Republican administration, and the cheerleader role played by most of the media on behalf of the Democrat's nominee, Sen. Barack Obama.

The issue of health care – health care reform, universal health care, “making health care more affordable” – is a critical one. Prior to the appearance of major problems with the economy in September, health care was expected to be one of the leading issues in the campaign.

It still is a prominent issue that comes up often, although the media have not focused on it as much as they otherwise might have if the economy overall was not perceived as the main issue.

Nonetheless, on October 28, with seven days left until the election, CNN’s nightly news program Lou Dobbs Tonight reported that Obama was refocusing on health care.

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In suburban Pennsylvania, Barack Obama shifted his closing arguments into high gear. . . In Virginia his focus was health care reform. . . the health care message is one the Obama campaign believes has deep appeal to undecided voters, including those here in one of the reddest parts of Virginia.

During his half hour prime time political infomercial on October 29, which ran simultaneously on more than a half dozen commercial broadcast and cable television channels, Obama highlighted his health care reform proposals.

October 2005 – We’ve come a long way

Exactly three years ago, a story grabbed my attention, concerning a bill that was being introduced in the California legislature to provide government-run universal health care for all state residents and to mandate that everyone pay for and take part in the program by force of law. When I started searching for information, as I reported in an article on October 1, 2005, I was surprised to find very little opposition to the proposed California plan. Instead, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of Web sites, tax exempt groups, labor unions, professional associations, various “experts,” and so forth that were endorsing government-run health care.

The California proposal did not succeed, but one in Massachusetts, forcing all state residents to obtain government-approved conventional medical insurance, became law in 2007.

Meanwhile, over the past three years, politicians in other states, and at the national level, who had been tentative and cautious about proposing radical changes in American health care, wary as they were since the Clinton health reform plan went down to defeat in 1994, became more bold as they saw polls that seemed to augur well for a greater government role in, and even a total takeover of, the field.

Three years ago this month, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), in his first year in the U.S. Senate, was a relatively quiet, low key figure. He denied having any intention to run for president in 2008 but obviously (in retrospect) he was laying the groundwork for his announcement little more than one year later that he would be a candidate for president.

On January 22, 2006, after being in the U.S. Senate for only one year, Obama appeared as a guest on NBC’s Sunday morning interview program Meet the Press:

SEN. OBAMA: I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things. But my thinking has not changed.

MR. [TIM] RUSSERT [moderator]: So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?

SEN. OBAMA: I will not.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, thank you very much for your candor and for joining us and sharing your views.

In August 2006, Obama gained some news coverage – the most since his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston 25 months earlier – when he made a trip to Africa. During that trip, Obama and his wife, Michelle, made a point of being publicly tested for HIV. Obama used the test to recommend that everyone be tested and advocated universal access to the drugs (to be paid for by the U.S. and Europe) that are used to treat HIV-AIDS for everyone in the world who tested HIV positive.

Having reported for years on the phony, wasteful, and deadly war on AIDS, and on the constantly expanding, highly fashionable and politically correct HIV-AIDS meme, I was very disturbed to see Obama’s bandwagon highlighting this issue.

Things in terms of Obama and health care policy would only get worse in the months ahead.

Campaign 2008 and a new “secret plan”

In the long campaign for the presidency, the most protracted in American history, a variety of Republican and Democrat candidates competed for their parties’ nominations. The Democrats focused more on health care, since all of the contenders on that side of the aisle believed that American health care was in “crisis” and all of them supported a much greater role for government. Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY), the early frontrunner for the nomination, supported mandatory government health care for everyone and Obama, the eventual nominee, proposed mandating only that children have health care while he promised universal health care accessibility for everyone else.

Meanwhile, Obama’s past statements, matched by recent comments he made, revealed that, no matter what his official current campaign position is, in reality he favors the most draconian universal health care scheme of all – single payer.

Adding weight to the growing feeling, or fear, that a shift to universal health care is in the offing is a report published on October 24, 2008 in the Washington Times, “Kennedy secretly crafts health care plan.” Confirming what was reported in an article in September by Kiplinger Business Resource Center, the Times article notes that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), an influential member of the U.S. Senate since 1963, recently diagnosed with and undergoing treatment for brain cancer, plans to introduce major new health care legislation in the new Congress: “Mr. Kennedy's goal, his aides say, is to introduce a universal health care bill as soon as the new Congress convenes next year and to push quickly for its passage – a much-accelerated timetable compared with the last time that a health care overhaul was on the agenda, at the start of the Clinton administration.”

According to the article

"Kennedy is really seizing the moment," said Adrienne Hahn of Consumers Union. "He's a real bridge-builder. He can bring strange bedfellows together."

Mr. Kennedy's close relationship with Mr. Obama could prove a boon to those prospects as well.

Kennedy aides say that although they were not working with the Obama campaign on their plan, they also are not considering proposals to which a President Obama would object.

"Were Obama to win, [Mr. Kennedy] will have significant influence on an Obama administration?" Mr. [Ron] Pollack [executive director of Families USA] predicted.

The senator from Massachusetts was an early backer of Mr. Obama's presidential run, and his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, which focused on health care reform, was one of the event's highlights.

"I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate," Mr. Kennedy told the cheering crowd in Denver. "This is the cause of my life, new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American - north, south, east, west, young, old - will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege."

On October 28, 2008, the DC Examiner reported that Elizabeth (Mrs. Sen. John) Edwards, an advisor to Obama on health care policy, said “I’m not that fond of his [Obama’s] plan” because, according to the Examiner, “Obama views healthcare as a commodity, rather than a human right.” The Examiner story went on, “Edwards – who has battled breast cancer since 2004 – said McCain’s plan fails in all important areas by leaving the decision-making process up to individuals, who can frequently ‘make stupid economics decisions.’”

This quote by Edwards is telling, in a way similar to Obama’s unscripted comments to Joe Wurzelbacher (Joe the Plumber) of Holland, OH that he wanted to “spread the wealth around.” In Edwards’, and no doubt in Obama’s, view, it’s a mistake to leave health care decision making up to individuals because they might “make stupid decisions.” It’s much better in their view to have the federal government make all of the decisions about individual Americans’ health.

As a long time proponent of medical freedom, autonomy, pluralism, personal responsibility, and choice, I find this statement by Edwards, and the agendas of the entire Obama campaign, in particular regarding health care, absolutely chilling and Orwellian.

Dr. Statism

George Will, in his nationally syndicated column on October 26, 2008, had an apt description for Obama’s plans for health care: “Dr. Statism.”

Will discussed a possible antidote or counter to Obama’s statist designs, Proposition 101, an initiative in Arizona that will be on the state’s ballot on November 4. The proposition reads "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."

Alternative Medicine and the universal health care imperative

Until the early 1990s, before the government began an aggressive re-expansion of its role in American health care, alternative medicine was thriving. Part of the statist federal agenda was to rename and reconfigure alt med as “CAM” (complementary alternative medicine, or alt med light), and to integrate ancillary, secondary, non-threatening alt med light therapies into the dominant conventional, allopathic medical mainstream.

Helping this agenda along was a bone thrown to the original alt med community in the form of the creation of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) in 1991, later expanded to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in 1998. These organizations, true to form, stifled creativity, channeled alt med’s thriving progress into bureaucratic quagmires, and ultimately made primary alternative therapies go out of fashion and become much less available.

And all of this took place before the federal government completely took over all of medicine – a prospect that may be imminent, and certainly will be if Obama is elected.

I have reported, commented on, and argued about these developments including the diminution of alternative medicine for years. In recent times, the audience of independent thinkers who are in touch with and informed by alternative medicine’s philosophical roots of independence and freedom has apparently diminished, as alt med/CAM players, proponents, and “stakeholders” have followed their self-interests toward the gilded cage of more government involvement and control.

It will be interesting to see what happens on November 4. If McCain, whose health care plans involve expanding free market choices and options, wins, we will be allowed four more years of relative freedom in health care. If Obama comes out on top, it is likely that we will have seen the last of the once strong and autonomous alternative medicine field as it is subsumed under statist government-run universal health care.

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