When people start talking about health insurance reform and how to bring health insurance to the American people, they inevitably end up in a ridiculous discussion about how to negotiate the cost of drugs, how to provide drug discounts to senior citizens, or how to engage in a system of managed care that denies medical services to certain groups. It's all a rather useless exercise in shifting paperwork, blame, or money from the pockets of one organization to another. And in the end, it helps no one. Health insurance reform needs to focus on the health, not the insurance, because you can never solve a problem by shifting paperwork to another party or bu denying services to an ever-expanding group of people. It's similar to the way in which the federal government wants to solve social security: just keep raising the qualification age until it's so high that almost nobody lives that long. How's that for security? "If you live long enough, we'll even pay you back all the money you worked for!" In the realm of health insurance, we need to start talking about disease prevention. The only way we're going to lower the costs in the long run is if we make our population healthier. And the only way we're going to make people healthier is if we start admitting the truth about the detrimental health effects of prescription drugs, processed foods, junk foods, soft drinks, lack of physical exercise and so on, and then start educating people about how to take control of their health and reduce their risk of ever experiencing chronic disease. That's how you solve the health insurance problem: by making people healthy. What a novel idea, huh? Right now people are getting all the wrong messages about their health. They are being told that unhealthy foods are good for them. The FDA has approved health claims that mislead consumers into thinking things like sugary oatmeal is good for your heart because it contains oats. It's a ridiculous claim. And yet the legitimate food claims -- like olive oil prevents breast cancer, garlic prevents cancer, raw nuts prevent heart disease -- are not allowed at all. In fact, those are outlawed by the FDA. So today we have a regulatory environment that actually prevents people from learning the truth about foods that could help prevent disease. Thank goodness the FDA is protecting us from all those dangerous health claims!
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Friday, July 10, 2009
Health insurance problem
When people start talking about health insurance reform and how to bring health insurance to the American people, they inevitably end up in a ridiculous discussion about how to negotiate the cost of drugs, how to provide drug discounts to senior citizens, or how to engage in a system of managed care that denies medical services to certain groups. It's all a rather useless exercise in shifting paperwork, blame, or money from the pockets of one organization to another. And in the end, it helps no one. Health insurance reform needs to focus on the health, not the insurance, because you can never solve a problem by shifting paperwork to another party or bu denying services to an ever-expanding group of people. It's similar to the way in which the federal government wants to solve social security: just keep raising the qualification age until it's so high that almost nobody lives that long. How's that for security? "If you live long enough, we'll even pay you back all the money you worked for!" In the realm of health insurance, we need to start talking about disease prevention. The only way we're going to lower the costs in the long run is if we make our population healthier. And the only way we're going to make people healthier is if we start admitting the truth about the detrimental health effects of prescription drugs, processed foods, junk foods, soft drinks, lack of physical exercise and so on, and then start educating people about how to take control of their health and reduce their risk of ever experiencing chronic disease. That's how you solve the health insurance problem: by making people healthy. What a novel idea, huh? Right now people are getting all the wrong messages about their health. They are being told that unhealthy foods are good for them. The FDA has approved health claims that mislead consumers into thinking things like sugary oatmeal is good for your heart because it contains oats. It's a ridiculous claim. And yet the legitimate food claims -- like olive oil prevents breast cancer, garlic prevents cancer, raw nuts prevent heart disease -- are not allowed at all. In fact, those are outlawed by the FDA. So today we have a regulatory environment that actually prevents people from learning the truth about foods that could help prevent disease. Thank goodness the FDA is protecting us from all those dangerous health claims!
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