Richard Nixon's War on Cancer: Why the Federal Government Shouldn't Get Involved in Healthcare

In 1971, Republican Richard Nixon launched a big government effort to end cancer. While this sounds like a noble idea, it provides another example of why the federal government has no business in healthcare. It also gives us another example of how Republicans often take government way too far as well.

Since 1971, billions of our tax dollars have been used in a form of corporate welfare for the pharmaceutical industry. In the first 25 years of Nixon's war on cancer, $39 billions of dollars were taken from taxpayers so the pharmaceutical business can deliver barbaric medicines that nearly kill the entire body in hopes of killing cancer, and often times it does kill the body.

Cancer rates have not gone down despite the billions of dollars spent by the federal government on the war on cancer. In 1972, an entire year after Nixon began his war on cancer, cancer deaths in the United States equaled 220,000. In 25 years, that number more than doubled to 560,000 deaths a year.

Billions of dollars spent have not provided any real wins in the cancer battle and yet the federal government believes they can offer more of these successes as Obamacare is now less than one year away since it officially begins upon fiscal year 2014 or October 2013.

Cancer is a $200 billion a year industry that creates lots of jobs. It's a huge part of the economy and the medical industry. The economics of cancer is about prolonging life where a five year survival rate is considered a success. Most cancer patients who doctors claimed are healed see a relapse or their bodies are so beaten they don't last much longer. You have to ask yourself, does government and the powers that be have a vested interest in keeping this industry booming. Is it fair to consider the $39 billion spent in the first 25 years of Nixon's war on cancer nothing more than a job stimulus.

What I find ironic about this is cancer is never treated through nutrition in the medical community. Our food is lacking nutrients while chemicals are constantly added whether they are preservatives or oil-based pesticides often leading to more sickness. It seems to me the war on cancer should be fought through nutrition first.

Yet it remains a crime in most Western nations to treat cancer with anything other than surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Eddie Van Halen, the famous guitar player, has made it past the five year mark since he was cured of cancer. He didn't go through traditional medicine for his cure. On the Howard Stern show, Van Halen offered some interesting words. "I cured my cancer in a way that's not exactly legal in this country. I'd tell you, but I don't want to go to jail. When you drink your damn draino it just holds it at bay. It comes back. Cancer is like a cockroach. It just comes back stronger."

Obviously, Van Halen understands the five year survival rates after a bout of chemotherapy aren't impressive for those who actually are given the cancer free assessment. There are plenty of other stories of people leaving the United States for cancer cures. You have to ask yourself, if it can be cured, isn't it bad economics to cure it since millions of people would be out of jobs? Of course it is.

In a thousand years, doctors will look back on Nixon's war on cancer as big government at its most evil. They will see how doctors of today treat cancer with barbaric medicines that kill the body in hopes of killing the cancer, and the cure will probably be as something as simple as nutrition. Don't believe me?

Visit a local farm and notice how fanatics farmers are when it comes to feeding their livestock with proper nutrition. Why?

Because vitamins and minerals are cheaper than a vet.

Wanna bet medical costs rise under Obamacare? Of course they will. Nutrition is the key to living healthy as well as preventing and curing disease. Obamacare doesn't focus on nutrition. It focuses on making sure more people can be treated with modern medicine, which if you ever read the Physicians Desk Reference, you begin to realize that why it may be targeting a disease it is also destroying the delivery organ, often the liver.

There is a truth about government too that should be realized. Federal programs like Social Security weren't made for long-term retirements. People were supposed to retire to help younger workers get jobs during the hard times of the Roosevelt era, and the federal government was counting on these older workers to die four or five years later, thus helping see a short retirement supplemented by a government check.

With the federal government at the helm of our healthcare, you can see how their previous failures will come into play for their broken systems.