Feds and powerful medical group curtailing care for Lyme patients
Are major insurance companies making billions by keeping you in constant pain?
For months — maybe even years — you’ve been limping around on aching, swollen joints.
Some days you’re so zapped of energy that you can’t even get out of bed.
You’ve been told that you don’t have Lyme disease any more. That it was successfully treated years ago.
But our government and a major mainstream group have been working together to convince thousands of doctors — and millions of patients — that chronic, long-term Lyme disease doesn’t exist. They’re allowing the disease to fester untreated in your body, setting you up for pain, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS or even death.
It’s part of a greedy conspiracy that’s making health insurers a fortune — all while denying you or someone you love the care you need.
The physician from Pawling, NY, calls it “one of the most shameful episodes in the history of medicine.”
And, boy, he’s sure got that right.
You see, for years an organization called the Ad Hoc International Lyme Disease Group — which includes the CDC, NIH and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) — has been setting guidelines for how doctors should treat Lyme.
Or, I should say, how they should avoid treating it.
Because they’ve been working to brainwash the entire medical community into thinking there’s no such thing as chronic Lyme.
They’re practically claiming it’s all in your head, and recommend docs stop treating Lyme after a short-term course of antibiotics.
And that doesn’t just deny you care. It denies common sense.
Lyme bacteria are actually shaped like tiny corkscrews, which allows them to burrow into your heart, brain, nerves, and joint cartilage. They can even hide inside other healthy cells.
That’s why, in lots of cases, a quick round of antibiotics won’t cure Lyme. And plenty of people who have supposedly been “healed” of the disease are left suffering for the rest of their lives.
And leaving Lyme untreated in your body can cause a host of serious diseases and even kill you.
Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, who specializes in Lyme research, said he’s never treated a patient for Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s or even multiple sclerosis who wasn’t also infected with Lyme.
So why deny that chronic Lyme exists and keep people from getting the treatment they need?
According to Dr. Liegner, the current guidelines are designed to “serve the insurance industry very well” — and save it billions.
Treating chronic Lyme is a long and expensive process. One that cuts into insurance company profits and even leads to costly disability claims.
And that doesn’t sit too well with insurers. Insurance companies spend more than $150 million a year lobbying the federal government to influence policy at the CDC and NIH — two of the groups that help develop Lyme guidelines.
In fact, one of the lead authors of IDSA’s Lyme policies is an employee of Metropolitan Life, one of the largest insurers in America. That company alone spent almost $3 million on lobbying efforts so far in 2015.
“Elements of academic medicine, elements of government and virtually the entire insurance industry have colluded to deny a disease,” said Dr. Liegner.
The good news is that Dr. Liegner and I aren’t the only ones who’ve figured this out.
Years back, an investigation by the state of Connecticut found that the IDSA failed to disclose financial interests held by several of its most powerful panelists.
Now the IDSA is supposedly set to release a new, more objective set of Lyme treatment guidelines. But experts say not to expect much — after all, there are still billions of insurance dollars at stake.
Well, you’re life is at stake, too. And if you ask me, that’s a heck of a lot more important.
That’s why if you or someone you love is suffering from Lyme — or think you might be — you need to take matters into your own hands and find a “Lyme literate” doctor.
Your first step should be to contact the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society for referral to a doctor who specializes in treating Lyme. You can visit its webpage here.
Sources:
“The politics of Lyme disease” Karl Grossman, October 2, 2015, CounterPunch, counterpunch.org
“Lyme disease guidelines panelists engage in coordinated propaganda campaign” October 5, 2015 Truthout, truth-out.org
