Being killed by doctors (iatrogenesis) is the #1 cause of death in the US.1
The equivalence of 6 jumbo-jets crashing daily.
In a given decade, more Americans are killed by healthcare than in all wars combined.
18% of GDP is spent on this complete disaster.
Every year, in the US there are 2.2 million in-hospital adverse reaction to drugs, 7.5 million unnecessary medical & surgery procedures, 8.9 million unnecessary hospitalizations and 20 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions.
Every decade, there are 89 million and 75 million unnecessary hospitalizations, so around half of the US population receives unnecessary medical interventions in a given decade.
One in ten Americans is injured or killed through unnecessary medical interventions in a given decade.
You are 21 times more likely to be killed by doctors than suicide.
Nearly half of institutional review boards (who basically runs clinical research) are also consultants to the pharmaceutical industry. When a drug company funds a study, there is a 90% chance that the drug will be perceived as effective whereas a non-drug-company-funded study will show favorable results only 50% of the time. The whole system is rigged for profit.
This is obviously messed up, but surely doctors save more lives than they end through mistreatment?
What would actually happen if hospitals closed? Do we have any historic examples of such a thing?
Yes we do!
When doctors go on a strike, the death rate drops.
The most comprehensive review of doctors' strikes was able to find mortality data for 5 physician strikes around the world, between 1976 and 2003.2
The first one was in 1976, when doctors in LA went on strike because they strongly believed they were paying too high settlements for their malpractice. (not joking)
For five weeks, approximately 50% of doctors in the county reduced their practice and withheld care for anything but emergencies.
During these five weeks, significantly fewer people died in LA. Somewhere between 55 and 153 lives were saved. However, after they went back to work, they killed an extra 90 people in the first two weeks in surgery as they were "catching up" with their backlog of elective procedures.
In March 1983 the doctors of Jerusalem went on a four month strike because they wanted more money.
Mortality didn't change at all.
In May 2000 the doctors of Jerusalem went on a one month strike because they wanted more money (again).
93 people died in May 2000 (strike).
153 people died in May 1999 (no strike).
133 people died in May 1998 (no strike).
139 people died in May 1997 (no strike).
Has health care gotten even deadlier in recent decades? I think it has.
Now, in all of these strikes, emergency care was still going on as normal; car crash victims were not left to bleed out. These were doctor strikes: nurses were still there, and emergency work was still being provided by doctors.
Interestingly, when nurses go on a strike, more people die in hospitals.3
I think we all knew as much: Nurses are our friends. They make you feel good. Meeting a doctor feels like staring death himself in the face. Dogs bark at doctors, yet likes nurses.
There are certainly situations where hospitals can provide you with help, such as being in a car crash or getting shot.
"Cochrane Reviews" are considered the gold standard in systematic medical review due to their rigorous methodological requirements. Their official recommendation is that you should not visit your doctor for a regular checkup because you will likely be prescribed unnecessary, dangerous treatments.4
This makes sense, because "health care" has no concept of health, you can not ask a doctor to make you healthier, he can barely cure diseases, but he is quite skilled at masking and reducing symptoms.
It's quite obvious that hospitals are not geared toward health, we all know that the keys to health is good food, sunlight and fresh air. In hospitals we find awful food with near-zero nutrition, no sunlight, poor air. It would cost very little to fix this. Maybe fire some doctors to pay for it..
Up to 95% of doctor malpractice isn't reported, and none of the numbers mentioned here includes subtle injuries such as the widespread poisoning of the water supply with prescription drugs, lifetime doses of x-ray radiation, and countless other harmful effects from modern medicine.
There's also a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association involving 5782 patients over a 2-year period showing that using an ambulance is associated with higher risk of dying than using private transportation5 and that this could not explained by demographics, type of injury, or severity of injury.
This proven phenomenon, let's call it "ambulance-associated excess death" is caused by what, exactly? Perhaps it is harm from "medical" practices inside the ambulance, another explanation is the strong nocebo (negative placebo) effect. It has been imprinted upon us that an riding in an ambulance is associated with dying, we have seen it on TV since we were children.
Support your health. This is what matters in the end, your health is in your own hands, by virtue of what you eat, think and do. Don't believe the lie that western "healthcare" is something you should ever place your trust in.
2 Doctors’ strikes and mortality: A review
3 Do Nurse Strikes Kill? Evidence From New York
4 Cochrane Review: General Health Checks Are Not Beneficial
5 Emergency Medical Services (EMS) vs Non-EMS Transport of Critically Injured Patients
7 Impacts of the medical malpractice slowdown in Los Angeles County: January 1976