My RANT about the health care debate going on in America…
The USA now ranks 27th in world for healthcare but we spend the most on healthcare BY FAR!
Neither side will ever talk about HOW to get America healthier.
All I hear is how to get more people insured, get more people drugs, and change who pays for this failing system.
Access to cheaper meds they say – Properly prescribed meds are the leading cause of hospitalizations and the 4TH LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE UNITED STATES!
That’s all the debate is. Who should be paying for a failing system that costs more every year, as people get sicker every year.
Zero talk about how 3/4 of Americans are Overweight and how to solve that.
Zero talk about how One in Five adolescents aged 12-18 years, and One in Four young adults aged 19-34 years, are living with Prediabetes.
Zero talk about how 54% of kids have a Chronic Illness… 54%!!!!
Zero talk about how childhood obesity has tripled in the past 20 years and HALF OF OUR KIDS ARE OVERWEIGHT!
How about they discuss HOW to make exercise a part of every day of school at every age.
Talk about how to drastically improve school lunches.
Talk about ending food industry lobbyists so the government stops putting out such awful nutrition advice.
Try this – when you are in public, just stop and look around. Look how many people are overweight, limping, hunched over, and unhealthy. It seems to now be the norm.
Is that the result of poor insurance coverage? Not enough medications?
Or is that a result of poor lifestyle choices, which usually begins at a very young age?
In our current health care system, less than 3% is spent on lifestyle and prevention. (The majority of that is spent on BP screenings, cholesterol tests, blood sugar tests..etc…THAT’S NOT PREVENTION, THAT’S EARLY DETECTION!)
Eat like crap, don’t exercise, develop symptoms….. go to the place covered by insurance…..Don’t get the care you actually need…. get what insurance will pay for.
Then, get some pills to mask those symptoms without a single conversation about what’s causing them. That system is an epic failure.
P.S. I’m not anti-med or anti-hospital (both obviously can and do save lives). However, diseases caused by poor lifestyles can never be fixed by a pill. Changing lifestyle choices is the only cure – there’s just not much money to be made in that…..
P.P.S. What our Health Care system should be doing is laid out here.
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