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The Phamaceutreal Drug Racket Pharmaceutical companies depend on your ill-health, to maintain their huge profits! Part One The Rocketing Cost of Health Care edical ‘ignorance’ is costing us billions’, reads a heading in The Daily Telegraph Mirror of 24 February, 1991, over an article as follows: “Poor funding and a lack of knowledge about preventive medicine has led to a $2 billion blow-out in public health spending, experts say. These costs rose nationally from $26 billion to $28 bil- lion [in one year] - an average of $1700 per person - according to figures to be released by the Australian Institute o' Health. Writing in an article in The Sunday Telegraph on October 27, 1991, the Federal Minister for Community Services and Health, Brian Howe, expresses his concern: “Health care costs a i amount of money: $1796 for every man, woman and child... The trouble is that if Medicare becomes too costly, this country can't afford to keep footing the bill: which means that individual Australians will have to foot the bill instead or go without the necessary health care. Medicare is getting increasingly expensive. Total gov- ernment wnature on Medicare benefits rose by 70 per cent between 1984-85 and 1989-90, and by another 11.2 per cent in 1990-91. Before the changes in the Budget were announced, Medicare benefits were expected to rise by another 28 per cent in real terms over the three years to 1994-95: that's approximately $1.3 billion..." The rocketing cost of health care in Australia is not unique to this country, but is typical of all industrial nations. In his book Limits to Medicine (1979), prominent medical historian, Ivan Illich, writes: "During the past twenty years, while the price index in the United States has risen by about 74 per cent, the cost of medical care has escalated by 330 per cent. Between 1950 and 1971 public expenditure for health insurance increased tenfold, private insurance benefits increased eightfold,* and direct out-of-pocket payments about threefold.” In overall expenditures other countries such as France** and Germany” kept abreast of the United States. In all industrial nations - Atlantic, Scandinavian, or East European - the rowth rate of the health sector has advanced faster than at of the GNP [gross national product].* Even discounting inflation, federal health outlays increased by more than 40 per cent between 1969 and 19747"? Pharmaceutical companies depend on your ill-health, to maintain their huge profits! Published by: Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research PO Box 128, Cabramatta NSW 2166 Australia Are We Consuming Too Many Drugs? As was reported in The Bulletin, 24 March, 1992, one of the fastest-growing components of Australia's costly health bill is the pharmaceutical drug trade, which accounts for $2 billion a year for prescription drugs. The Bulletin article reveals that “Australians are on a drug binge, consuming twice as many antibiotics per capi- Vol 2, No 13 - 1993 NEXUS¢23