It?s been estimated that healthcare, or more accurately insurance, costs each American $8000.00 per year. The health-care we receive in the US is the best in the world by a long shot. It?s our insurance industry that our government has helped create through worthless regulation that needs reform. A majority of Americans agree in poll after poll, insurance reform is needed, but they do not want government run ?healthcare?. They are smart enough to understand what a disaster that would be. Every ?social program? from Medicare to social security is literally bankrupt. There are other answers.
Why don?t we hear anyone talking about is lifestyle and disease prevention as the key to affordable insurance? Because, it?s not PC to talk about the financial burden the unhealthy lifestyles many Americans put on the rest of the population. Although Americans have free will and choose their lifestyles, 100% of the blame is not theirs. A large portion of it belongs to the American Medical Association, American Dietetic Association, the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, the edible oil industry and our government. The recommendations, treatments and products these organizations have bombarded society with using billions of dollars over the years wreak havoc even on the healthy. The end result, 100?s of billions of dollars wasted annually on treating highly preventable diseases.
The CDC reports that obesity related diseases have reached almost $150 billion. The cost of treating obesity has doubled over a decade due to increasing prevalence. According to the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)t he cost of cardiovascular diseases and stroke in the United States in 2009 is estimated to be $475.3 billion. This figure includes both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs include the cost of physicians and other professionals, hospital and nursing home services, the cost of medications, home health care and other medical durables. Indirect costs include lost productivity that results from illness and death. The American Cancer Society estimates total costs of cancer to be $228.1 billion. Those with diabetes in 2002 had more than double the healthcare costs than those without. This includes both direct and indirect costs.
It?s glaringly obvious that the medical, pharmaceutical and insurance industries need to move from being treatment oriented to disease prevention. Unfortunately moving from allopathic medicine to holistic medicine is about as likely as winning the lottery; these industries make a fraction of the money in disease prevention as they do in treating disease. There is just not a lot of money to be made in healthy lifestyles.
