Category Archives: Regulation

Practice Guidelines: sound science or marketing hype?

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Physicians were once trained and encouraged to use critical thinking skills coupled with scientific knowledge to make diagnoses for their patients. Increasingly however, doctors are pressured by the government and insurance company bureaucrats writing their checks into substituting rigid practice guidelines for the physician’s own judgement.

In this podcast interview with Michael Ostrolenk, Richard Amerling, MD summarizes how these top-down, one-size-fits-all, “cookbook” protocols hurt patients. Dr. Amerling is  Associate Professor of clinical medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and the Director of Outpatient Dialysis at the Beth Israel Medical Center.

Practice guidelines are too often both financed and written by the pharmaceutical industry and thus become biased towards favoring treatments benefitting these companies. In addition to discussing the scientific flaws in such guidelines, Dr. Amerling also explains why Obamacare will further entrench them and punish doctors who treat patients on an individualized basis.

Read Dr. Amerling‘s latest article “Practice Guidelines – Fail Again,” and watch a presentation by him from the 2011 AAPS meeting, below.

Codex Alimentarius – Global Food Imperialism

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Does food  safety come from a top-down driven, controlled-market economy where an elitist select few decide what is “best” for all of us?  The United Nations believes the answer to that question is “yes” and is formulating “guidelines” and standards to “protect” us from not only food but vitamins and other dietary supplements.   Scott Tips, JD, President and General Counsel of the National Health Federation, speaks with Michael Ostrolenk about the history and nature of these threats to our medical freedom posed by the Codex Alimentarius (food code) and what the NHF is doing to keep our liberties intact.  In addition to his work at the NHF (the oldest existing consumer health freedom organization founded in 1955), Mr. Tips is the author of the book Codex Alimentarius – Global Food Imperialism.

Medicare regulations punish honest doctors

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A GAO study found that Medicare bureaucrats give incorrect answers to physicians’ questions regarding Medicare regulations 96% of the time! If these Medicare “experts” do not understand the rules how can honest physicians be expected to successfully navigate the Medicare regulation labyrinth?  Michael Ostrolenk speaks with Lawrence Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D. about how this “Incompetence-Based Bureaucracy” is driving good doctors out of practice and preventing patients from receiving the care they need.

Health Care Freedom Zones

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The personal medical freedoms of Americans have been in many ways on the decline well before the signing of the PPACA last March and the result is often, tragically, lost lives.  Patients looking to innovative, possibly life-saving medical treatments are met by bureaucratic red tape created by government agencies like the FDA and state medical boards.  In this podcast, Benjamin Barr, J.D. of the Wyoming Liberty Group discusses with Michael Ostrolenk an innovative solution to resecure our lost rights – Health Care Freedom Zones.