A large slice of the United States population relies on Medicare, and medical insurance, to provide them with health care.. That’s a problem – a big one… Because, if you’re unfortunate enough to have to rely on Medicare – you’re relying on practices and procedures FIFTEEN YEARS OUT OF DATE. In the case of Medical Insurance – probably TEN YEARS OUT OF DATE.
Who wants that?
Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen
New things simply aren’t paid for in the Medicare and medical insurance world.
Everything Medicare and medical insurance has to offer has to undergo an “approval process”before it can be paid for. The approval process maintains the status quo – and that’s not good for the American consumer.
So, we the American consumer, have found solutions elsewhere.
What’s happened is that the American public is now engaging in a form of “self health.” We are taking care of ourselves and our families in a variety of new ways. About 80% of California’s health care dollar, for instance, is being spent on what’s commonly called “alternative medicine.”
Why?
Because, “we the people” want it. It works, and it’s cheaper.
It makes more sense to be healthy, and stay healthy, then to get sick and be “treated” with dangerous drugs and surgery. Statistics show that conventional medical care is the third largest killer of Americans.
It’s that simple.
There used to be an organized opposition here in the California, working against this new form of health care. They called themselves the “quackbusters,” and their job was to maintain the status quo in health care
– forcing us into 10 or 15 year old medicine routines.. They opposed everything that competed with the old drugs and surgery paradigm. They once had power here. Now they don’t. They were beaten to a pulp by the California Health Freedom movement.
The quackbusters are, however, active in other places.
The California Health Freedom Movement is tough. Very tough. It wants real, up-to-date, health care, and it wants it right now. It allows no impediments to its desires. None. Why should we? We’re Americans.
One of the last alternative MDs prosecuted by the Medical Board of California (MBC) was Bob Sinaiko of San Francisco. That case, and its surrounding activities, literally, broke the quackbuster’s power in California. They’ve never been able to recover.
The MBC, itself, was beaten silly over the Sinaiko case. The existing appointed Board, at the time, was entirely removed, and ALL new members put in place.
The MBC staff, the real source of quackbuster machinations, was reviled in the California press where it was shown that they intentionally avoided prosecuting bad doctors, and focused on solo practitioners. The NEW appointed board conducted hearings, and workshops, to get to the bottom of the problems brought to them by health activists. Things have changed.
We’ve made things BAD for quackbusters here.
Alfredo Terrazas was the State of California Attorney General prosecutor in the Sinaiko case. “T-Rex” as he was labeled by the Sinaiko strategy team, hissed in the courtrooms. His presentation was right out of the quackbuster playbook – all name calling, short on facts, long on falsehood and misrepresentation.
Sinaiko’s attorney, in an official complaint to California State authorities had pointed to Terrazas’s courtroom antics, where Terrazas had claimed that Sinaiko was “practicing junk science, voodoo medicine, pseudo-science — that is to say chronic fatigue syndrome is voodoo science — selling a bogus treatment, aggressive, loose cannon. He diagnosed Dr. Sinaiko and says he suffers from delusions, paranoia, grandiosity, he has persecutory delusions; if we are not careful, he will mutate his present form of medicine in some other form of quackery. He endangers the public. He is insidious, he uses junk science…” Typical quackbuster blatherings.
The Sinaiko case, of course, starting in 1996, had gone through the administrative hearing process, and on to the OLD appointed board
– where of course, the quackbuster mentality had influence. They took his license…
But in California – we simply went on to the next step – appeal. Sinaiko supporters not only raised the money, but they raised public consciousness about the attack on Sinaiko. They made alliances with others groups. Bob Sinaiko has the support, in his case, from not only the California and North American Health Freedom movement, but from the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), the California Medical Association (CMA), the Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL), and his patients. Amicus briefs (friend of the court) have been filed by most of the organizations that support Sinaiko.
The quackbusters didn’t have a chance. They won the first battle, and died in the war.
Terrazas, in the appeal phase of the Sinaiko case, began to have serious problems. It soon became clear that he wasn’t representing the opinions and policies of the NEWLY appointed Medical Board members, or the people of California. He was in trouble, for his allegation in appeal was “The standard of care for California medicine was that only ‘widely accepted’ medicine could be used in California. All else is health fraud, and quackery.” Again -typical quackbuster blatherings.
The first Judge Terrazas came up against openly snorted at his opinions. Terrazas was forced to use his one peremptory challenge to remove the judge from the case. Then came the new Judge – which didn’t work for Terrazas that well either. Real Judges, outside of the Administrative hearing world, actually act like Judges are supposed to act. When things started to go bad for Terrazas’s case again, he tried to have the second Judge removed. That didn’t work. Then he tried to have all those Amicus briefs barred from appeal. That didn’t work either – and T-Rex was on a downhill slope.
Of course, as luck would have it, somewhere during that process, Terrazas got a new boss. One who I think, was well aware that recently elected Attorney General Bill Lockyear himself (the BIG Boss), had voted FOR health freedom bills when he was in the California legislature.
I happen to know that there is a 76 page document circulating, detailing Terrazas’s actions in the case. There is talk of “prosecutorial misconduct” charges being filed with the State Bar association after the appeal has been decided on April 24th, 2003.
Alfredo Terrazas has been reassigned… just a matter of days before his case comes before the Judge.
Tim Bolen – Consumer Advocate