Health Care Reform and Obesity

As America struggles with health care reform, and as we look at how we can truly save money on health care, it is not only the cost of insurance that needs to be scrutinized. Yes, the cost of health care has sky-rocketed. Americans can barely afford the cost of health insurance. But are insurance companies to blame? Maybe; but when it comes to seeing your doctor, why do we have to see the doctor? What’s causing us to be unhealthy in the first place?

If you were a smoker and you needed to see the doctor for lung cancer, would you blame the cost of health care on the insurance company? If half of all Americans were smokers, and the insurance companies had to raise premiums because they were paying for x-rays, MRI’s, asthma, cancer treatment, and repeated visits for lung-related care on a large part of the population, who would you blame? The insurance companies? The tobacco companies? The consumers?

If you were overweight and it was causing you to have high a series of health problems and you just kept eating, would you blame the insurance company? If 67% of the American population were obese, would you blame the insurance company?

When you consider that over 53 diseases are directly related to obesity, and that obesity is the second leading preventable cause of death in the US, it becomes painfully clear that the cost of health care is not only a function of insurance company.

Why don’t insurance companies pay for weight loss programs? That’s one question to consider.

Another point to consider: when does the consumer take responsibility for his/her own actions? The consumer can’t eat until he/she is overweight by 50 pounds, and then complain about the cost of health care.

What’s the solution? Well, it seems there must be a series of solutions ranging from consumer education, taxation of empty-calorie items, to insurance coverage of medical weight loss and in addition, incentives for consumers and companies who promote weight loss, exercise and healthy lifestyles.

Studies that advance the prospect of losing weight without diet, as proposed in the UK,  offer hope that you can just alter the gene code and you can be healthy without going on a diet, but until then, physicians offer more realistic approaches.