OBAMA'S HEALTH PACKAGE AN INCENTIVE FOR HEALTH CARE RATHER THAN DISEASE CARE

After watching President Obama’s health-care- address to the nation, last night (September 09, 09) a thought occurred to me. Beside the 30 million US citizens that will be added to the health rolls, and the fact that the health-insurance industry will be unable to cherry-pick among their potential clients, or dump clients from their rolls --- all a good things. But another advantage for American health to come out the Obama Health Plan overhaul is that the health-insurance industry, when it is unable to dump patients—will have to actually work to improve their health—or face the financial consequences of poor health. Mike Pollan in a NY Times Op-Ed piece “Big Food vs Big Insurance” notes: “A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line.” As a result of the Obama health-care overhaul--the health care system, as with other systems elsewhere in the modern industrialized world, will have a financial stake in the health of the citizenry. (Perhaps this is one of the main reasons why the lifespan, mortality and morbidity figures of populations in modern Europe are so much better than ours, even in the face of the fact that we outspend them more than two to one.) The health-industry will have to worry about how many of their clients are smoking, how many are obese, how many do not exercise, or eat healthfully.
These new concerns will surely lead them into conflict with the giant US food industry which makes its profits by encouraging people to consume too much cheap, high-fructose corn syrup and other sources of empty calories. The health care industry..instead of profiting from treating the results of the unhealthful and profit-making schemes of the food industry which lead to obesity, diabetes, circulatory disease and cancer, will in-the-future be in the business of encouraging their clients to avoid these health pitfalls—or suffer the consequences or have the their company suffer the financial losses of client poor health . Dr Mark Hyman MD in “Why our Health Care System is Making Us Sick” (http://stanford.wellsphere.com/general-medicine-article/why-our-health-care-system-is-making-us-sick/363234) states: “All the stakeholders in industries that affect our health -- the pharmaceutical industry, the food producers, agribusiness, and the restaurant industries -- profit when people eat unhealthy food, exercise less, and are more stressed. They're making money off of your poor health. Take the drug companies. They cajole us into believing that we can live any harmful lifestyle -- and fix our health problems simply by taking a pill. Just look at that commercial that encourages you to eat unhealthy food because an antacid pill or two will ease the indigestion it gives you. Worse, our healthcare system is based on the outdated idea that disease should only be treated, not prevented. It's really disease-care, not healthcare.