Thursday, June 02, 2005
Obesity Becoming International Human & Financial Crisis
These reports again highlight the critical importance of Mike Huckabee's health care message and mission for America. At the rate America's health care costs are rising, the government cannot tax future workers enough to cover the costs. Doing so could reduce the standards of living for the next generation -- our children and grandchildren -- for the first time in American history.
The solution to this human and financial crisis, in addition to compassionately reforming tax-payer funded health care programs, is to reform the way America pays for health care and the way Americans think about health and health care, leading to a reduction in the massive costs associated with preventable diseases.
"I have embarked on a mission to challenge the faulty thinking of our current system that could result in a complete change in the paradigm of health care in America," Huckabee writes in his new book, Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork.
Mike Huckabee's mission is also personal one, having himself lost over 100 pounds recently as he sucessfully reformed his own health. Through this personal journey, Huckabee recognized that others not only can, but must take control of their own personal health. And the health care system should help them -- not tacitly support poor diet and lifestyle choices.
"Our whole health care system is screwed up," Huckabee says. "We pay people to get sick. We do nothing for them to stay healthy. That's completely wrong. We should be creating incentives for individuals to lead a healthy lifestyle rather than pour money into a program that pays for sickness."
Obesity is not an aesthetic problem. It is a very complex problem tightly connected to diabetes, atherosclerosis (blocked arteries) and other major health problems and causes of death according to Professor Constantine Tsigos, chairman of the 14th European Congress on Obesity. "It has to be treated and confronted seriously."
Despite a better understanding of the causes of obesity, a multi-billion dollar diet industry and countless weight-loss programs and gadgets, the number of overweight and obese people is rising at an astounding rate, affecting all socioeconomic groups.
In European countries, rates have soared by 10-50 percent in the last decade. In Japan, it has doubled since 1982 and in the United States the percentage of young overweight people has tripled in 25 years, actually shortening Americans' expected life span, reversing a 200-year trend.
In addition to having devastating human costs in terms of illness and suffering, the obesity epidemic presents crushing financial costs to the United States and other affected countries. In the U.S., costs associated with preventable diseases associated with obesity, much of it paid for by taxpayer-funded programs Medicaid and Medicare, threaten to bankrupt states and the Federal government if something is not done soon.
Just some of the preventable medical conditions and costs associated with obesity include diabetes, high blood pressure and colesterol, knee surgeries, dementia and specialized medical equipment.
To help put this in perspective, preventable obesity-related diseases cost the U.S. far more each year than the war on terror.
Gov. Mike Huckabee, America's new health care spokesperson, has the ideas and leadership to guide America through it's health care crisis.
BSR
