On the other hand, americans are fat as hell lol. (I am american)
Obviously that is a complicated issue, but what's the cost look like for everyone if 40% of Americans weren't so fat?
Obviously that is a complicated issue, but what's the cost look like for everyone if 40% of Americans weren't so fat?
Cheap packaged food is very bad for you, and not everyone has the ability to purchase fresh stuff and cook it.
But I've also worked a good portion of my career in healthcare IT (claims benefit management, EHR), as well as a paramedic, seeing first hand the suboptimal care in ERs, hospitals, and SNFs (skilled nursing facilities). I have many physician and other HCP friends. SNFs regularly ship "annoying" residents to ERs because the staff deem them to be too high maintenance, resulting in a $2,000 bill each way for the ambulance, $3,000+ for the ER... and may do this multiple times a week.
I also grew up in Australia, and while that healthcare system certainly wasn't perfect, we spend far more here for similar outcomes.
My other passionate cause is end of life care - roughly, we spend more in the last year of someone's life on medical care keeping them alive, sometimes with horrendous quality of life (and often for family's benefit, not the patient) than we do in the previous ten years of their life, and we spend more in that ten years than we spend on the rest of their life. Forget "death panels", the more we allow death with dignity, or just better counseling for families that it's okay to let someone go, the better.