Protect CAM and Health Freedom: HealthRevolutionPetition.org

Health freedom is one of the primary challenges faced by the U.S. today. Though we aren't all suited for frontline politics, the health freedom fight does not have to be all or nothing. There are many ways we can influence, and accomplish, change from our homes and from within our communities. Such as:

1. Ask your employer about natural medicine insurance alternatives.

2. Honor and protect your personal health first.

3. Be a grassroots promoter: Scour your community for the services you want. If they don't exist, ask for them. If they do exist, help to promote natural medicine and CAM services, and the longevity of the businesses that provide them.

4. Support community wellness education.

5. Familiarize yourself with health freedom laws in your state.

6. Help HealthRevolutionPetition.org to reach their goal of 100,000 signatures.

HealthRevolutionPetition.org is a new, grassroots petition that demands revolutionary changes to the health care system in America. It includes reforms of the FDA, drug company advertising, school lunch programs, coverage of natural therapies, and much more. See it and sign it online at HealthRevolutionPetition.org.

Should the FDA have more regulation over dietary supplements?

Following the release March 2, 2009, by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) of a report on the oversight and regulation of dietary supplements (FDA Should Take Further Actions to Improve Oversight and Consumer Understanding), the Natural Products Association (NPA) released the following statement from Executive Director and CEO David Seckman.

"The Natural Products Association appreciates having the opportunity to be included in the GAO's review of dietary supplement regulation, particularly regarding the recent implementation of adverse event reporting and good manufacturing practices. Our initial impressions regarding the four key recommendations of the report are as follows.

"Contrary to opinions stated in the report, the FDA already has a great deal of information about individual dietary supplement products and their manufacturers. The dietary supplement industry has cooperated by registering all manufacturing facilities under bioterrorism regulations that went into effect more than five years ago. Additionally, the NPA is currently working with the government to create a database of all dietary supplement labels to augment this information.

"We also take issue with the implication that the FDA has limited power to remove products from the marketplace. In fact, although the agency has had scant reason to do so, it has exercised its ability to take products off the shelves it deemed a health risk.

"While we supported legislation to establish mandatory adverse event reporting for dietary supplements and over-the-counter drugs, we still believe that reporting should be limited to incidents that are serious. If the FDA's resources are already stretched, as the report indicates, then adding to this burden by mandating that any complaint be dealt with by the agency does not make sense.

"We support further guidance clarifying how the FDA determines when an ingredient is considered 'new' to the marketplace and what evidence is needed to document safety. Likewise, we are in favor of the agency clarifying when it believes products should be marketed as conventional foods versus dietary supplements.

"One of the fundamental principles of DSHEA [Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994] is providing consumers with more information so that they can make informed decisions to maintain and improve their health. So we are in agreement that the FDA should work with stakeholder groups to educate consumers about the safety, efficacy and labeling of dietary supplements.

"There is little scientific data regarding underreporting of adverse events and the data that are cited are not specific to dietary supplements, but represent all FDA-regulated products, including pharmaceuticals, a category that accounts for more than 460,000 reports annually.

"As we told the GAO, we believe regulations governing the manufacturing of dietary supplements enhance the FDA's ability to ensure the safety and purity of these products. These long-awaited regulations, more than 12 years in the making, were greeted with enthusiasm from industry. Likewise, the industry supported the law establishing mandatory adverse event reporting for dietary supplements. However, we disagree with some aspects of how the FDA has implemented this law. Specifically, we told the GAO the following:

1. The changes to dietary supplement regulation exceed the mandate of the law, especially in regarding to prefatory warning language on product labels.

2. The substantial added expenses to dietary supplement manufacturers to redesign and replace their product labels due to the AER law, upwards of $200 million according to the FDA's own estimates, should have been proposed through a formal rulemaking process, not a guidance. Additionally, the FDA is not allowing adequate time for manufacturers to re-label their products in this case, only one year. Previous regulations of this magnitude have allowed manufacturers a reasonable three years to implement label changes.

We are also concerned about the availability of adverse event reports submitted to the agency and how they will be reported to the public . This has yet to be adequately addressed by the FDA.

"As we have in the past, the association supports adequate funding for the FDA to do its job in regulating dietary supplements. This includes fully implementing the law, DSHEA, and taking appropriate enforcement action against those who break it."

Obama Calls for Health Care Reform in 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN)--President Obama pledged Tuesday night to cure Americans from what he called "the crushing cost of health care," saying the country could not afford to put health-care reform on hold.

President Obama tells Congress Tuesday night: "I have no illusions this will be an easy process."

"This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes," Obama said in his speech to a joint session of Congress.

Obama pointed to the increasing number of uninsured and rapidly rising health-care premiums, which he said was one reason small business closed their doors and corporations moved overseas.

Obama's prescription for health-care reform included making "the largest investment ever" in preventive care, rooting out Medicare fraud and investing in electronic health records and new technology in an effort to reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy and save lives.

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process," the president said, adding that he was scheduling a gathering next week of "businesses and workers, doctors and health-care providers, Democrats and Republicans."

"The cost of health care has weighed down our economy and our conscience long enough. So let there be no doubt, health-care reform cannot wait, it must not wait and it will not wait another year," Obama said to a standing ovation.

The president also said Americans would see a cure for cancer "in our time." Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, died of ovarian and uterine cancer at 52.

Obama made health-care reform a central theme of his presidential campaign and promised not only to achieve universal health care in his first term, but also to cut the average family's health care health-care costs by $2,500.

In his speech Tuesday, he placed health-care reform alongside education and energy reforms as central pillars of his recovery plan.

An estimated 45.7 million Americans are uninsured, and for those with coverage, and health-care costs have been rising four times faster than wages, Obama said.

The average cost of family health-care coverage more than doubled from 1999 to 2008, from $1,543 to $3,354, according to a report by the Institute on Medicine released Tuesday.

During his speech, Obama touted changes in the health-care system already passed in his month-old administration as part of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

"Already, we have done more to advance the cause of health-care reform in the last 30 days than we have in the last decade," he said. "When it was days old, this Congress passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for 11 million American children whose parents work full-time."

Signed into law on February 17, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act also includes $87 billion to bolster state Medicaid programs and offers a 65 percent subsidy for nine months to help the unemployed pay for their COBRA coverage.

COBRA allows the unemployed to pick up the payments and continue the health insurance coverage they had with their former employer. The subsidy would help an estimated seven million Americans, according to a congressional estimate.

The president's health-care message was applauded by Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a national organization for health care consumers.

"President Obama is absolutely correct that the nation's economy and the federal budget deficit cannot be fixed without meaningful health-care reform," Pollack said in a statement.

© 2009 CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/24/obama.health.care/