Health Over Wealth- Lowering Healthcare Costs

Lowering the Cost of Health Care

There has been a lot of debate in congress about how to lower the cost of healthcare, the most likely option is to make everyone pay for insurance, this will bring about a lower overall cost. However, this entire debate is revolved around the ideals of wealth, it is not truly for reasons of health that they do this. If it is about Health it's about the health of the economy, not the health of the people. If we want to lower healthcare costs we must first go to the root of the problem, which is people are getting sick too often. Lets clear up one thing, accidents happen and it is sometimes necessary to go to a hospital or a doctor and the patient needs to be cared for fully, but a majority of doctor and hospital visits come from self neglect (meaning the individual has neglected to take precautionary measures to ensure their own health). That is not to say they should not be covered anyhow, we all make mistakes, but a majority of the costs are due to neglect and not to a random accident or injury. For example, the leading cause of death in the United States is heart disease. Massive amounts of research have shown that heart disease is caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, whether it be eating too much fat or not getting enough exercise. This means that through changes in lifestyle heart disease can be prevented if not completely eradicated.

Eliminating the leading cause of death in the United States would certainly lower the overall cost of health would it not? 616,000 people died from heart disease in the United States in the year of 2008. Nine in ten had at least one of the following risk factors; high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, obesity, poor diet, and were physically inactive or drank alcohol. This is straight off of the CDC website. Every one of those factors (with the arguable exception of diabetes which only accounts for 11%) is preventable through proper dieting. 1 in 6 dollars spent on health care goes to heart disease, which cost an estimated 414 billion dollars in 2010. That is about $1380 dollars a person for that one year!

In general we tend to be cautious about our safety and the safety of others and maybe it's due to a lack of education on the importance of proper eating, but so many people are not concerned about what foods or nutrients they intake until major disease occurs. Even then so many of us will take the prescription route instead of eating right and seeking a more permanent measure. We take the pills, because it is easier than changing what we eat and how we behave. This is understandable, but could there be a better way? It is not fair that all the people devoted to taking responsibility for their own health should have to pay a tax so that those that don't take the preventative steps should get a lower rate at the expense of those who actively participate and invest money to their health. This like many solutions a partial one and it is not the best option available. The fore fathers had the guidelines right, they knew that by the time it came down to a socialized healthcare system something went wrong along the way, but what did we do wrong....

To be continued...

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Stay tuned for more updates on this article.   It is quite long and will cover a dynamic range of information on  living a health oriented life.  You can sign up for automatic e-mails by entering in your e mail address in the space to the right. Please tell me what you think in the comments below, I would love to hear your ideas and maybe talk about them.