Much has been said about Health Care in the last 4 years. Most of this discussion has centered on the exorbitant cost of medical care. There is no debating that the cost of medical care is very high and out of reach of a lot of the population. What has not been addressed is how much of this cost is due to ailments that are the result of poor choices in lifestyle.
To be sure we have made great strides in cutting down the cancer rates by aggressively going after smoking and it has paid off. Lung cancer rates and deaths have dropped significant since we aggressively started to increase the awareness of the link between cancer and smoking. Cigarette consumption has dropped by 75% since its peak in 1963 and we have seen a steady drop in lung cancer as a result. Today smokers pay a premium for life insurance and some health insurance companies offer reduced premiums to non-smokers.
The biggest component increased health costs are heart disease and diabetes which are directly related to the increase in obesity. This will be the next challenge for the country. Unfortunately, this is a a little trickier because the causes of obesity while usually lifestyle related are a little more diverse than smoking.
First, we have much more sedentary lifestyle than prior generations and it's getting worse. The advent of the Internet, social media, gaming and other sedentary hobbies have replaced activity based leisure. There has also been a shift where physical activity has been de-emphasized in schools. This has led to a general intolerance towards any level of exercise. We unfortunately have trained people to avoid the discomfort associated with healthy exercise.
Second, is the food component. We have moved towards increased consumption of heavily processed foods high in fats, sugars and carbohydrates. It's so much easier to throw a pizza in the microwave vs. preparing healthy fresh foods and let's be honest some of that stuff tastes so much better!
Third, there is a dangerous but subtle trend to classify obesity as a disease. I won't argue the medical merits of this but the instant something is classified as a disease, it has the affect of letting people off the hook for what are mostly poor choices in diet and exercise. There is a tendency for condition to be used as an entitlement to continue making poor choices.
The fact is that there is no magic. If calories in exceed calories out then you are going to gain weight. If you take in just 100 Calories more than you burn in a day (one extra cookie) in just over a month you pick up a pound or an a year 10 pounds. It doesn't take long to add up but the good news is that you can reverse this just as easily. Add 30 mins of walking in every day and hold your intake constant and in a year off come those 10 pounds. There are 2 knobs to turn and both work equally well. You get to make the choice which to turn and how much to turn it. You also need to commit to a lifestyle change not just a seasonal change.
We need to address this head on because of the increase in obesity continues health care will continue to be unaffordable. Fact is that we all pay for each others bad habits in our health insurance and health care (people that can pay get factored into the hospitals rates to cover the bad debt). There needs to be treatments that address the causes and incentives for making healthy lifestyle changes. Unfortunately, there also need to be disincentives for not making good choices and this should include bearing a greater cost for heath care associated to lifestyle choices. I know this isn't fashionable but people need to start taking responsibility for their own health.
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