The Future Of Health Care Is Fighting The Farm Lobby
In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, Michael Pollan portends the entangled futures of health care, obesity, and insurance companies. Just as the insurance companies joined governmental efforts to rally against smoking, Pollan foresees insurance companies tackling obesity. This is necessarily after upcoming health care reforms.
Even the weaker versions of reform bills have legislation preventing discontinued care for “per-existing conditions” and mandate that companies charge everyone the same premiums. In this way, the stage would be set for insurance companies to prevent obesity and diminish the current obesity epidemic. They would have to if they wanted to protect their profit margins. America spends so much on health care compared to other countries in part because we are so much fatter, says several well-regarded sources (if not in so many words). Essentially, our national diet and poor exercise habits are the elephant in the room of the health care debate:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet — there’s smoking, for instance — but many, if not most, of them are. We’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.
In other words, if insurance companies were looking to trim the fat off the bulk of their spending, they should start with the most prevalent and preventable chronic diseases. For example, a person with Type 2 diabetes has medical care costs of about $6,600 a year or $400,000 over the average lifetime. Encouraging practices that prevent diabetes would essentially put that $400,000 of profit back into the pockets of insurance companies. Pollan illustrates how, “suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.”
Thus, the real battle will begin. Right now, the sort of foods that fatten people up the most are made cheap thanks to government subsidies and strong agribusiness pressure. Pollan writes how it is now possible to imagine health insurers throwing their money into the legislative ring in opposition of those subsidies, the dismal state of school lunches, and also the soda tax, if it ever comes to light. After decades of having the government being putty in their hands, the farm lobby and agribusinesses like Cargill are unlikely to go quietly in the night. They will, no doubt, spend millions upon millions if it will ensure future millions upon millions remains with their industry. In other words, the fight over the next farm bill promises to be a spectacular showdown.
…No matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health — which means going to work on the American way of eating.
But even if we get a health care bill that does little more than require insurers to cover everyone on the same basis, it could put us on that course.
For it will force the industry, and the government, to take a good hard look at the elephant in the room and galvanize a movement to slim it down.
September 11, 2009
Tags: agriculture, Barack Obama, change, farmers, Health, Michael Pollan, nutrition, obesity, policy, subsidies Posted in: Health, Politics
Leave a Reply