One of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan, just wrote an article in the NY Times about health care reform and how Americans eat. Definitely worth checking out! A few interesting tidbits:
- According to the CDC, 3/4 of health care spending goes to “preventable chronic diseases,” many of which are linked to diet.
- We’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity.
- “The government is poised to go on encouraging America’s fast food diet with its farm policies even as it takes on added responsibilities for covering the medical costs of that diet.”
- “Reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system.”
- “As things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them.” See my similar comments three months ago.
- A patient with Type 2 diabetes costs the health care system $6,600 a year or more than $400,000 over a lifetime.
- “When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system — everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches — will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn’t really ever had before.”
