"Healthy Parents have Healthy Children."
Posted on 08/11/2007 11:03:25 PM PDT by neverdem
We do not have a health care crisis in this country - we have a health crisis with a health care system incapable of dealing with it.
Consider the fact that 75% of the $2 trillion we spend on health care goes toward treating the symptoms of chronic disease, and not toward preventing disease in the first place. Imagine if we were to reverse that model by focusing on prevention, wellness, and early testing, all of which are undervalued and poorly supported today. We would save countless lives, pain and suffering by the victims of chronic conditions, and billions of dollars. Realizing this potential will not be easy. It will require a fundamental transformation of a health care system focused on acute care into one focused upon maximizing individual health as our first priority.
Our vision should be to have the healthiest people, not just the best health care, in the world.. With prevention and wellness as the cornerstone of our health policy, we can be number one in both.
For example, according to the World Health Organization, by not smoking, eating healthier diets, and exercising, we could prevent 40% of cancers, 80% of Type-2 diabetes, and 80% of heart disease and save hundreds of billions of dollars every year just from these prevention methods alone. But much more than money is at stake here. If we continue down our current path of ignoring the consequences of unhealthy lifestyles including poor diet and lack of exercise, one-third of our children will develop diabetes, a debilitating and deadly condition. For the first time in our history, a generation of...
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Our current employer-based system, which was originally adopted as a way around wage and price controls during World War II, almost totally removes the consumer from normal free market practices.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Can't we just ban all unhealthy foods and activities?
Wellness (and prevention) was supposed to the cornerstone of the original HMO programs. Trouble was no one would reimburse physicians for such procedures, even though they gave it great lip service. I proposed a wellness clinic back in 1987, following the rhetoric of the HMO’s. The very same HMO’s said there’s no money (they controlled the money) “available” for this. That was 20 years ago, Newt.
or hmm give a tax credit for lowering BMI?
On a serious note, I could go for that suggestion.
Michael Moore can thereby be taxed to oblivion.
BMI bites...use an index of % body fat/BP/cholesterol.
yeah it’s not a pure “libertarian” idea but it’s just the sort of incentive idea that was behind the welfare reform in Contract with America. People will be paid to lose weight, obesity will go down and we’ll see fewer health problems.
much easier to measure one variable and that would be either weight or body fat. Lose the weight and BP/chol will follow suit.
"Healthy Parents have Healthy Children."
We could let in real sugar instead of stopping it at the borders, and putting in corn syrup in its place. As there are very serious questions about what corn syrup does to our bodies hormone wise.
But then a couple very rich families benefiting from that wouldn’t make quite as much money next year.
In fact we have something like a quarter of the population on their way to being morbidly obese, and the associated heart-joint-diabetic problems that go along with it.
And we have a pharma industry who’s sole goal is to convince (with the aid of tv commercials) every living human that something is critically wrong with them. Their legs twitch at night, so get a prescription. They sometimes have heartburn, so get a prescription.
You need oxygen, so get a prescription.
Everyone someday dies. Unless death is from an accident or something else that occurs suddenly, people generally get ‘sick’ before they die. Sometimes that illness is brief before death (e.g. a fast-growing cancer), and sometimes it’s protracted. In either case, unless one chooses to let nature take its course and not intervene medically, there will be a time when most of us are consumers of health care. Preventative medicine, unless it results in illness-free immortality will not prevent us from eventually being health care consumers. People generally spend the most money they ever will on health care in the final years, or even months of their lives.
That said, it is true that if we reduce obesity we will have less diabetes, and therefore less expenditure for chronic blood glucose control and for treatment of diabetic complications. This is a worthy goal, as are the other interventions mentioned in the op-ed. It’s not a new concept, however. When I was a child (more decades ago than I like to think about) there were national programs for promoting physical fitness. There were national efforts to educate in schools about the four food groups and a healthy diet. These programs still exist. They can only go so far. Ultimately individuals have to make their own choices. In my experience many people do a better job taking care of their cars than they do their bodies.
It is true that govt policies have led to the replacement of sugar with corn syrup. If corn syrup was the cause of all our problems then the libertarian has an easy answer. End the corn syrup bias (subsidies and foreign sugar tariffs) and we’ll go back to more sugar.
However, I really doubt sugar is that much better than corn syrup. In the end, a calorie is a calorie and you’ll still gain weight with sugar.
My policy idea is better because it doesn’t ignore the problem but it also doesn’t punish people who choose high calorie food. It rewards people for real results. Health care costs will go down and we won’t have all these calls for govt health care.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men.
The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
AYN RAND
You are so right. I watched my FIL and MIL get old and die and they used a lot of healthcare, thus medicare money in their last years. FIL (starting in his 90th year...up until then he had very few health problems) had cancer, but recovered. Then he fell, broke his hip, got MRSA and lingered for months, the cost was outrageous for the antibiotics to treat his MRSA, but you can't not treat. He lived a long time, considering his condition, in a specialty hospital that had a high level of care and charged big $$$.
I sure have used my share of our health care benefits over the years...we have group insurance through my husband's company. But could I have prevented my illness (MS)...no. All other aspects of my health are fine. People do not have control over many chronic illnesses and the meds to treat many of those illnesses are very expensive.
Then again what else would one expect from Head Hall Monitor Gingrich and Head Camp Councilor (and former fatty, former smoker) Huckabee?
These assclowns are FDR socialists, not conservative icons.
I imagine Huckabee will be on board there after the voters reject him.
An Intelligent Health System will be the greatest single 21st century source of high paying jobs and foreign exchange earnings as people across the world discover they want the quality of life, the level of health, and the effectiveness of health care which the American Intelligent Health System will make possible.
“...by not smoking, eating healthier diets, and exercising, “
What is the point?
No cigars?
Someone’s definition of ‘healthier’?
Exercise?
I take it you didn't read the 2nd half of the article and stopped at the point about not smoking..
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