How to Pay for Health Care with Lower Costs

by Stephen Simac

AN OUNCE IN TIME SAVES NINE

Real health care reform will actually improve Americans health
instead of merely paying for their medical needs. Politicians have
no stomach for slowing the gravy train of medical treatment, even
as we steam towards an economic cliff with the sickest nation in
history aboard.
Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of Preventive Medicine Research
Institute in Sausalito has shown that diet and lifestyle changes
could cut sickcare costs in half in a year based on his reversal of
heart disease in 2,000 patients. Dr. Michael Roizen of the
Cleveland Clinic, estimates that 80% of medical costs could be
reduced with evidence based health habits. Dr. Andrew Weil,
director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of
Arizona, predicts we will need a new culture of health and a
complete transformation of medicine in this country to avoid being
inundated by a silver tsunami of unhealthy boomers. Dr. Len
Saputo has published a plan for “radical health care reform based
on the integral health medicine model.” None of these physicians
had a “place at the table” during the recent “reform”, which
basically fought over how to pay for our country’s poor health.
Integrating complementary and alternative practitioners into the
medical monopoly mix will be ferociously resisted even though
patients report greater satisfaction with their CAM results at a
fraction of the costs of conventional treatment. Probably why.
Just like Single Payer advocates, these doctors were kept off the
“reform” table. Congress isn’t debating or addressing the causes of
spiraling medical costs. Instead they’re debating how to harness
younger Americans with the burden of paying for sick, aging
Americans. This is sheer fantasy when future earnings, much less
the health of ballooning younger Americans is considered.
 We have enshrined AWOL, the American Way of Life, a
sickening, stressful, unbalanced, unsustainable system as a false
god. Because it glitters at the top of the wealth and power pyramid,
the base lusts to be gilded with their stardust. Ending up sicker and
poorer, coated with heavy metals.
UNHEALTH IS WEALTH FOR SOME
We could save hundreds of billions on medical care by improving
Americans health. We can do it without saddling our descendents
with crushing debts and obligations. Charging mitigation fees for
products and practices known to cause medical problems will pay
for their externalized costs to society, instead of inflating profits of
death, disease and injury merchants.
A recent UCLA study found that health complications from
obesity costs California $41 billion a year. Sweetened beverages,
greasy foodstuffs, psychotropic medications, hormone mimicking
chemicals and sedentary lifestyles cause obesity, the new normal
for Americans. Obesity costs for almost all other states must be
even higher per capita, so at least ten times more for the country.
Estimates vary.
We love to blame the victim, especially obese, sick ones, but
humans crave sweet, fatty, salty foodstuffs, more so when under
stress. That once ensured meeting nutritional needs. Now it’s a
carefully laid trap. When San Francisco recently proposed a soda
tax the industry moaned about “demonizing any one particular
food.”
Former FDA commissioner David Kessler revealed that food
production companies have been conspiring to exploit innate
biological signals by intentionally “loading and layering” sugar, fat
and salt, designing in color, scent and mouth appeal while heavily
advertising their “bliss bombs” to hook consumers into overeating
any time, any where.
Their products are physiologically as addictive and harmful as
any illegal drug. Inevitably Big Food will pay massive judgments
like Big Tobacco, with sin taxes to follow. Most Americans are
willing to levy “sin taxes” on tobacco, because few Americans use
it. They are unlikely to support taxing sins they enjoy. Yet
governments are stretched and looking for income. Sooner or
later, on the basis of health hazards. Products and practices. will be
taxed instead of banned. Just like gambling.
Oddly, neither tobacco taxes or court fines (gambling revenue,
either) go directly to pay for their medical costs. Instead general
funds, lawyers fees, or families of victims reap the rewards. The
money’s more likely to pay for prison guards or private jets, than
cardiology or oncology treatment.
There’s no shortage of products and practices with solid
evidence for charging mitigation fees. Most are integral parts of
AWOL, so ending public subsidies for their health costs will be
fiercely and bitterly opposed. Ensuring that fees go directly to pay
for treatment will be key to imposing them.
Simply paying for conventional disease care will not make
Americans healthier, but charging extra for unhealthy products and
practices will reduce their use, improving health. Walmart knows
how price sensitive most Americans are, they’ll speed for miles to
buy cheaper sox at a bigbox, slowing only to supersize it at a drive-
through.
There’s surely synergistic effects from the many health problems
associated with AWOL, but charging for whatever portion of the
costs evidence shows they cause would focus a financial lens on
reducing their manufacture and consumption.