Physicians profiting off of repackaged meds

image

We all know that medical doctors are in fantasyland when they wear their white coats always hoping they would somehow sprout a halo or radiate some transcendental effulgence to make the process complete.

Unfortunately, we also know that when they come out of medical school, where Big Pharma funds their curriculum, they are entrenched in a cut-it-out or a take-a-pill mentality. Never ever do they get schooled in actual healing because that would eliminate repeat customers for the pimp. It is the take-a-pill mentality that this article deals with.

In Hawaii, the workers’ compensation and auto insurance carriers are seeing a huge number of cases with excessive markups for repackaged drugs dispensed by MDs, sometimes at rates double or triple what the identical medications cost if obtained through pharmacies. There is no solution to this unless Hawaii’s corrupt GMO Legislators pass a bill outlawing this practice. If our legislators are getting a kickback from the doctors, like they are from Monsanto, that ain’t never gonna happen.

The problem is that Hawaii physicians have long had the ability to dispense their own drugs. Unfortunately, the excessive markups of those repackaged drugs provide, if you will pardon the expression, a service.

Supposedly, physicians’ practices have taken a turn downward and the excessive charges for meds helps keep them in business. If those high cost charges were monitored, some say it would cripple their businesses and they would stop seeing work comp and auto insurance patients altogether.

The backlash would hurt many of the insured workers who would not be able to afford the out-of pocket charges if they fill their prescriptions at a pharmacy. With the doctors they pay nothing because their visits and treatments are fully covered by insurance.

Here’s how it works: doctors who dispense drugs typically purchase those drugs from repackagers, who buy in bulk and sell smaller repackaged quantities to the doctors. Because the repackagers do not have the buying power that the large national pharmacy chains have, they cannot get as good a discount as the chain. This explains why the physician-dispensed meds are higher than the identical pharmacy-issued ones.

This is then compounded by the fact that Hawaii law limits reimbursements for prescription meds to a national average wholesale price as listed in industry publications plus a 40% markup, which, by the way, is the largest in the nation.

The loophole arises when repackagers make bulk purchases and are able to repackage the drugs for sale to physicians and assign a new wholesale price.

The bottom line is that the poor insurance companies do not like to have to pay out more because that has an adverse effect on their executives’ year-end bonuses.

For a minute now, let’s follow the pill: there are two scenarios –

1- The pimp makes the drug. The repackager buys the drugs in bulk and repackages them in smaller containers. The repackager sells them to the doctor who fills prescriptions in his office and dispenses the drugs to the consumer at a higher price than the pharmacy.

2- The pimp makes the drug and sells them to the wholesale distributor who is usually the pimp’s largest hooker who can negotiate larger discounts based upon volume. This hooker then sells the drugs to the national pharmacy chains, which get discounts and rebates based on volume or market share. The drugs are then dispensed to the consumer at a price lower than the doctor’s.

What we have is a system built, maintained and furthered on sickness. Nowhere does anyone in the system think of healing. It is always about treating a symptom for life. If the reverse was to happen and healing was the ultimate goal, think of all the businesses that would suffer.

To effect true healing, we have to assume responsibility for our health. If we know that certain things in foods like saturated fat, GMOs, high-fructose-corn-syrup, aspartame, food colorings, chemicals and pesticides, nutrient-depleted milk products, etc., are bad for us, stop eating them.

For some change is hard. For others it’s easy. But in the end if one can live without medications and monthly visits to the doctor, it’s all worth it.

Aloha!

Sources:
www.sedgwick.com
www.center4research.org
www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com
www.collective-evolution.com

Hesh Goldstein
When I was a kid, if I were told that I'd be writing a book about diet and nutrition when I was older, let alone having been doing a health related radio show for over 36 years, I would've thought that whoever told me that was out of their mind. Living in Newark, New Jersey, my parents and I consumed anything and everything that had a face or a mother except for dead, rotting, pig bodies, although we did eat bacon (as if all the other decomposing flesh bodies were somehow miraculously clean). Going through high school and college it was no different. In fact, my dietary change did not come until I was in my 30's.

Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.

After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.

Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.

I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.

So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".

Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.

I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.

But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.

The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.

But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.

So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.

Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.

I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.

Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.

A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.

In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.

My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.

I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.

Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.

The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.

Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.

For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.

Namaste!