The healthcare system – How we can see through it, survive it, and transform it
Dr. Harald Wiesendanger
736 pages
1st edition 2019
€39.80
incl. VAT plus shipping costs
as PDF via email: €19.90
Table of contents
What kind of system is this that thrives the worse off we are?
There is no money to be made from healthy people. Nor from dead people. The lucrative ones are those in between: the chronically ill. The more there are, the better the business with them. The earlier they become ill, the longer they remain sick, the more medical goods and services they consume in the meantime. Detrimental to business are: knowledge about the true benefits of these goods, about the actual extent of their side effects and risks; preventive care; and treatment alternatives.
What follows logically from all this about the true, ultimate goal of the medical industry? About authorities that allow it to operate? About politicians who do nothing to change it? About voters who give their votes to such politicians? About the media that remain silent? About doctors who aid and abet? And about patients who play along? In his new book, the founder of “Auswege” sees our ailing healthcare system in the grip of organized crime. He shows how we can see through this system, survive, and transform it.
Global profit machine
A healthcare system exists to fulfill a humanitarian task of paramount importance: in as many cases as possible, it should eliminate or at least alleviate illnesses and ailments as quickly and permanently as possible, or better still, prevent them from occurring in the first place.
We are assured that a free market economy brings us closer to this goal: in the competition between different goods and services, the best ones will inevitably prevail in the long run. This is because they naturally find the most significant demand among consumers. In principle, this is no different for medical services than it is for vacuum cleaners, cars, detergents, and televisions. So, out of economic necessity, medicine is increasingly producing more effective remedies that alleviate and ultimately eliminate physical and mental suffering more comprehensively, more quickly, and more sustainably.
However, this promise only reassures us under four conditions:
1. Consumers make fully informed choices and decisions: they are aware of all available treatment options, their advantages and disadvantages, their short- and long-term effects, and their side effects.
2. The sources of information that consumers draw on are clean—uninfluenced by people who profit from offers, which is why they understandably seek to overemphasize their benefits, downplay or conceal their limitations and risks, disparage and eliminate competitors, and ridicule and silence critics.
3. Competition actually takes place: providers face off against each other; benefit/risk comparisons are possible, are constantly being made, and are made public.
4. Provider-independent bodies ensure that these three conditions are met: legislators, licensing and supervisory authorities, courts, and the media.
If you are puzzled as to why so-called modern medicine, with its ever-increasing technical and financial resources, is producing more and more chronically ill people, you will find the answer here: our healthcare system is failing because, in truth, none of these four conditions is being met. And so this book sheds light on a market that has long since spiraled out of control. In this market, a few providers, because they have insane financial resources at their disposal, have almost unlimited power to comprehensively deceive consumers about the benefits and harms of their products, discredit unpopular competitors, prevent regulations, circumvent laws, evade effective controls, poison all sources of information, silence critics, and make all important players compliant—all for a single purpose: to maximize profits. Our healthcare system, it must be said so clearly, has largely degenerated into a plaything of organized crime—a well-oiled supply machine that, to the horror of many doctors, has long since restructured itself into a mafia-like organization: the medical industry. It will continue to do so worldwide. Because globalization unleashes capitalism as long as political control does not keep pace with it.
Changing this requires more than just a few tentative reforms. The failure of the system cries out for revolution. And this revolution will not happen unless we persistently demand and support it.
Reviews
Gesundheit adhoc 7/19: “A cynical logic has long dominated and perverted our ailing healthcare system. This devastating finding is confirmed by philosopher and psychologist Harald Wiesendanger, founder of a foundation for the chronically ill, in his latest book. ‘The lubricant of this system is money, an insane amount of money,’ he states.”
PSI Press Agency 6/19: “Alternative healing methods are beneficial, especially for chronic conditions, even in cases that are supposedly resistant to treatment. In terms of side effects and costs, they are far superior to conventional medicine. Nevertheless, our healthcare system puts them under constant pressure to justify themselves, pays for them only in exceptional cases, and threatens their existence. Why is this the case, regardless of their therapeutic value? Who is responsible for this, and with what goals, strategies, and means? How can this be changed for the sake of patients? Harald Wiesendanger opens our eyes to this in his latest book.”
openPR, July 22, 2019: “Returning to a form of medicine that is more humanitarian than monetary, that provides care and healing, requires ‘more than just a few tentative reforms,’ Wiesendanger makes clear.”
Money, money, money …
Alternative Health Information Portal
“The existence of the profit machine and its weaknesses is clear to many involved, but since they get their share of the pie, the ‘no change’ philosophy will remain the guiding principle for the foreseeable future. (…) Since Wiesendanger speaks of “corrupt opinion leaders,” he himself must assume that well-fed prejudices prevent the media and other multipliers from engaging with his work.”
Group M/Editorial Office Jörg Meyer, Düsseldorf
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WHO Technical Report Series – DIET, NUTRITION AND THE PREVENTION OF CHRONIC DISEASES
There and Back Again: A Forty-Year Perspective on Physician Nutrition Education
About us
The AUSWEGE/WAYS OUT Foundation/Charity provides therapeutic solutions for chronically ill people: in unconventional healing methods, in the broad spectrum of natural and experiential medicine, and in holistic forms of therapy. And we want to educate people so that they don’t have to look for solutions after they have lost their health.
To achieve this, conventional and complementary medicine must move from being opposites and parallels to working together – not only in treatment, but also in prevention.
For more information about our AUSWEGE Foundation, visit: www.stiftung-auswege.de