Until we change our mindset, our culture, and our addiction to all the wrong foods, no doubt, we will be taking the path to an expensive disease care system. This is very sad because the solution is so simple and now it is bogged down in a massive government boondoggle.
While health care is important for all, this new law is sending our nation down the wrong path. The solution is simple and we've known it for thousands of years. Hippocrates stated: "Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food." And more recently, Dr. Michael Roizen said: "It’s much easier to do prevention than treatment."
Until we change our mindset, our culture, and our addiction to all the wrong foods, no doubt, we will be taking the path to an expensive disease care system. This is very sad because the solution is so simple and now it is bogged down in a massive government boondoggle.
0 Comments
Otis Brawley, M.D., is the American Cancer Society's chief medical and scientific officer. He spoke eloquently about how the health system doesn't provide incentives for the best care, pointing out that the "system isn't failing; failure is the system." One of his initial statements: "The second leading cause of cancer is the combination of very little physical activity, bad diet, which usually means high caloric intake, and obesity." You can watch his entire presentation here. For an employer, costs can be as much as 40% higher in one year for someone who is overweight because of all the issues associated with obesity, including diabetes, back problems, asthma, depression and heart disease.
Read the entire article. NPR states: You really need to be prepared to make the most of each appointment. Here's the article with the Ten Questions.
It also links you to a question builder. Check it out. Obesity not only impacts our personal quality of life, but also our well-being as a state. Colorado spends more than $800 million annually on obesity-related medical costs and that number is sure to rise at the same pace as the numbers on our scales.
Here's the scoop: About 1 in 5 Coloradans are obese. In Mississippi its 1 in 3. Now think how much we are spending on medical care. As Michael Pollan stated: The American diet is a catastrophe. We don’t have a health care crisis. We have a food crisis. 75% of our health care costs are spent on chronic disease linked to the diet…and that is bankrupting us. Read More Where will the funds come from to pay for our health care system?
THE NATIONAL DEBT PROBLEM The U.S. is now more than $12 trillion in the red. Servicing that national debt will cost the country $202 billion this year, and more than $700 billion per year by 2019, according to White House estimates. For comparative purposes, $500 billion in interest expenses could cover the federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still have some left over. While this year's spending surge is widely believed to be a necessary response to the financial crisis and recession, the long-term budget crisis, which arrived just as baby boomers are beginning to retire en masse, has sent the Treasury is scrambling to lock in today's low interest rates by shifting short-term borrowings to long-term bonds. |
Welcome to my blog about diet, health, and lifestyle issues. You'll find snippets and tidbits to assist with living a healthier lifestyle. Enjoy. - Ken Leebow
I'm a professional speaker. If your organization would like someone to speak on the subject of diet, health, and lifestyle issues, please contact me.
Categories
All
Archives
December 2020
|