Loss of Faith in the Healthcare System

After getting “floxed,” I lost a lot of faith in the medical system.

I used to think that the medical system, as a whole, was trustworthy. I knew that the system was imperfect, but I thought that most of the problems had to do with cost and insurance, and that drugs generally were well understood and regulated, and that they did more good than harm.

Getting hurt by a prescription drug, an antibiotic no less, shook my faith in the medical system. Researching fluoroquinolones and other drugs made me realize how little anyone knows about how drugs work, and why they sometimes don’t work, and I further lost faith in the system.

As I witnessed a prescription drug causing people to be chronically ill, I started to wonder if many of the chronic illnesses (autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, mysterious diseases like ME/CFS and fibromyalgia, diabetes, etc.) were due to the cellular destruction inflicted by prescription drugs. Many prescription drugs, not just fluoroquinolones, wreak havoc on the microbiome, mitochondria, neurotransmitters, and more–and problems with those systems have been linked to many of the chronic diseases of modernity.

I saw that the only thing that the FDA is inclined to do about adverse drug reactions is to increase the size of the warning labels–as if anyone reads the warning labels and as if this is actually a solution. I noted that thousands of people are killed by prescription drugs each year, and I lost faith in the FDA’s ability to regulate the pharmaceutical industry.

The 21st Century Cures Act, a piece of legislation that is going through Congress right now, is a thinly-veiled give-away to the pharmaceutical industry that decreases drug regulation at a time when it needs to be increased. Congress is not only failing to recognize the problem of prescription drugs hurting and killing people, it is actively encouraging the pharmaceutical industry to do more of the same. I didn’t have a lot of faith in the U.S. Congress before I got “floxed,” but I have even less faith in them now. (If you want to read my take on the 21st Century Cures Act, I wrote about it in the post, “The 21st Century Cures Act” Is On Its Way – Here’s Why You Haven’t Heard About It that was published on Collective Evolution on 7/7/15.)

I wonder how many other people there are like me–who no longer trust the medical system after being hurt by it. I suspect that most (but certainly not all) people who get hurt by prescription drugs no longer view the system as a whole as trustworthy or credible.

Once a system loses credibility, many people opt out of it and seek alternatives. If the healthcare system loses credibility in the minds of most people, and most people opt out of it, it will, eventually, collapse. I have no idea when this will happen, or even if there are enough people who think like me that it will happen. We shall see.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are currently being hurt by adverse drug reactions, and more people will have to get hurt for a crash to happen. I don’t hope for a crash. I hope that the regulators (the FDA) start doing their jobs and that the pharmaceutical companies start upholding their credos and start having morals. I wish I saw that happening, but I don’t. Maybe we will reach a tipping point where it will happen–to be determined.

The healthcare industry is immense, and it is much more complicated than the sub-prime housing market that crashed in 2007-2008. However, I see some similarities between the sub-prime housing market crash and my assertion that the healthcare industry is going to crash (at some point–maybe). Those similarities are described in the post, The Healthcare System Collapse: Lessons from the Housing Market Crash and “The Big Short” that was published on Hormones Matter yesterday – 2/4/16. (This post started as an intro to the Hormones Matter post, and it just morphed into its own post. Please read and share The Healthcare System Collapse: Lessons from the Housing Market Crash and “The Big Short” – Thanks!)

I foresee a crash in the medical system because I’ve lost faith in it. Maybe I’m wrong and other people will respond differently from how I have after getting hurt by the medical system. Maybe I really am “rare” and other people won’t get hurt by the medical system. Or, maybe drugs will get more and more dangerous because of lack of regulation, and more and more people will get hurt by pharmaceuticals and they will lose faith in the system just like I did, and the demise of the system as we know it will arrive. To be determined, and we shall see. Hopefully I’m just being too pessimistic and the FDA will start doing a better job at protecting people from dangerous drugs. I really do hope that occurs.