The Political Gorilla In The Room: Healthcare

I spent the entire weekend learning about nutrition from a great mind, so I want to give the ideas I present here full credit to his presentation (you can visit that doc's website HERE, go to the "free stuff" part of the page to find other interesting scientific literature reviews).

The weekend was started with these staggering numbers.

16 trillion dollars.

15 trillion dollars.

The above number is our national debt.

The number bellow is our gross national product, how much our entire nation brings in (see google's graph of the number here).  Do those numbers scare you?  First off, do you even understand the magnitude of the number "trillion"?  Before you go any further, watch the below video to get an understanding of how much a trillion dollars is:

Now, let me give you an even scarier perspective.  The above numbers are missing something, the medicare deficit they don't add in:

34 TRILLION DOLLARS.

Now, different parties frequently argue about wars abroad as bankrupting our country.  Yes, that's a part of the problem, but the gorilla in the room is healthcare, specifically medicare.  We can't take care of our sick, elderly Americans.

Out of the 16 trillion dollars we plan to spend, Americans spend about $2.7 trillion on healthcare, AND WE'RE 37TH IN THE WORLD FOR HEALTH.

Want to save our nation, and solve the debt problem in one big swoop?  Fix healthcare.

Presently, we have a healthcare system that aims at making insulin more accessible to fix health problems.  How is this wrong?  Read that previous sentence again until you have an answer.  Have  it?  OK, now you can proceed....

The problem is that we should be preventing type II diabetes well before they ever get it, not trying to manage insulin after the fact.

I know this is a lot of gloom and doom, but sometimes a reality check is necessary to scare us into behavioral change.  I am specific in my use of the word "behavioral."  Get this right: diseases causes by lifestyle choices are bankrupting our country.  Diseases like type II diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.  Diseases that are easily treatable by making some hard decisions and doing what we already know we should be doing: eating more vegetables and exercise, for goodness sakes!

Now that we know, what will we do?  Today?

 

P.S. In the posts that follow, I'll try to help answer that question.