California Medical Board Hears FINAL "Enforcement Monitor" Report - and Changes Direction...

Page 2 of 3

The report ""Death by Medicine," released earlier this year shows that "It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States":

The number one cause of unnecessary death in the United States, called Iatrogenic deaths  (783,986) is shown in the table below, re-printed by permission of the authors:

The number two cause of unnecessary death in the United States is Heart Disease. Statistics show "The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697."

The number three cause of unnecessary death in the United States is Cancer.  Statistics show "the annual cancer death rate, 553,251."

The total number of known unnecessary deaths, per year, directly due to the American Medical System is 2,036,884.

For years the staff of the California med board, like most other State health regulatory agencies, focused their attacks on "good" doctors - those that stepped out of the drugs, drugs, and more drugs paradigm to find newer and better solutions for their patient problems - and conspicuously ignored the activities of the "bad "doctors - those that were responsible, of late, for making "organized medicine" that number one killer of Americans.   

It was, and is, commonly believed that California med board enforcement teams made decisions to spend limited enforcement dollars prosecuting doctors not on the seriousness of their actions, but on their potential to NOT be able to afford a defense. 

In other words - they went for the "easy hit." 

The California based Union of American Physicians & Dentists (UAPD) once told me that about 55% of all California MDs were "solo practitioners," working in small, individual offices - but that 95% of the prosecutions by the med board were filed against those same "solo" practitioners. 

Why?  four reasons, I think.  (1) Because doctors working for hospitals, HMOs, etc., had the protection of HUGE legal defense budgets, and the services of lawyers that could wipe the floor with anything the med board could face them with.  (2)  Hospitals will not report MD problems to the Medical Board - hiding from the board their activities - to protect their defective doctors.  (3)  State investigators and prosecutors had been focused on prosecuting "good" doctors through alleged "training" (propaganda) provided, I think, by the Federation of State Medical Board (FSMB), and other "quackbuster" influenced, or controlled, groups.  (4)  Investigators and prosecutors are, simply, poorly trained in the issues, and functionally incapable, of even understanding the complex issues of health care enforcement.

As you have read from one of my earlier newsletters - "The American Medical System is Broken..."