Want to know how to cut your risk of diabetes, stroke, heart disease and cancer? It's all about healthy lifestyles.
- Don't become obese (BMI lower than 30)
- Don't smoke
- Eat healthy (low in red meat, high in fruits and vegetables)
- Moderate exercise (3 1/2 hours a week)
Do these four things and you slash your risk by 80%: (study link). With all this talk about how to pay for health care, the answers are staring us in the face. We pay for health care by staying healthy. We want America the rich to pays for our health care needs. What we don't want is an America that forces us into personal responsibility to prevent the costs associated with poor lifestyles. We want our smokes and McDonald's and cable TV. And we want America the rich to pay for the side effects. We are a nation of entitled lazy couch potatoes. We want our health care, just not our health.
Stroke heart disease, cancer and diabetes are among the top ten causes of death and disability in this country. Insuring everyone will do nothing to make use healthier nor will it reduce costs. In fact, costs will accelerate. Perhaps it's time to stop blaming genetics for a large part of our health care problems and place blame right where it belongs. The numbers don't lie. Lifestyle is the driving force behind health. And the lion's share of the top killers in our country are the direct result of poor choices in life. Instead of spending one trillion two or three trillion dollars on insurance to take care of poor choices, we should be spending 1/10 of that on public policies that generate returns 100X greater than universal insurance.
Imagine for a moment if you were given the choice. Your health insurance would be your responsibility. If you engaged in all four categories of lifestyle choices, your insurance would be free, paid for by the rich. If you engaged in none of the four categories of lifestyle choices, you would pay full price or go without. Imagine for one moment what a revolutionary concept that would bring to the insurance of disease.
