Please don't get the wrong idea when you read this folks. I would not begrudge my mom or any of you the finest Healthcare in the world. But on serious reflection I start to wonder what kind of healthcare we Americans may really deserve . . .
My mom is 87. She has never been a particularly logical person. She watched a lot of television and was well indoctrinated by the American consumer media brainwash. She learned to blame everything on something else and to love junk food.
She was continually overeating and has gotten very little routine exercise in the course of her life. In other words as a housewife she was a crummy housekeeper and didn't spend a lot of effort on fancy food preparation.
Consequently she's in bad shape, overweight, weak, and suffering from all the ills of diabetes. She was never taller than 5 foot 7. At one point she was topping 325 pounds by a broad margin.
She's lost 140 lbs but I think a lot of that is morbidity and inability to digest and the fact that she overspent herself out of an all-you-can-eat establishment. She is fairly senile. 4 years ago we put her in a place where she has a controlled diet & 24hr assistance.
I watched her run up a hospital bill last week that would have basically wiped out a good fraction of my retirement money. It included two ambulance trips with the fire department in attendance (5 Guys + fire truck and ambulance.)
There were lots of tests both times & many hours in the emergency. Mom was four days in hospital cardiac, private room. $$$$$
This was not her first rodeo. No, the costs involved have been enormous, through a stroke and three heart attacks, and a Litany of other minor and major surgeries throughout her life.
Because Dad was a lifer in the military, mom has healthcare for life. (I doubt they do that for you GI's anymore.) Anyhow between that and Medicare, the whole bill was picked up by insurance (which means of course it was picked up by the American taxpayer.)
Okay this is where I start to sound like Simon Legree.
I look around in this city and what I see is: no one walks, everyone drives, and nearly everyone over 25 is overweight or on their way.
Restaurants are more popular than ever and they are springing up everywhere. The money spent to sell fast food is incredible, exceeding the total budgets of many small countries.
I'm convinced that 90% of the diabetes problems in America are simply caused by too rich diet too many calories and more than anything too little exercise.
And I am 100% convinced that the cost to provide medical care in the future, to all of these people who flounder, will more than double our current 20 trillion dollar debt.
Particularly if government controls the Healthcare System, and we have mandated insurance, and the current lobbying/graft practices continue.
I don't think the general population has a clue how our health care bill will balloon as the boomers and children of indulgent baby boomers go over the cliff like lemmings.
I think the FCC has a clear mandate to prohibit fast food & junk food advertising in the media, and thus cut out a huge portion of their ill-gotten income.
Also cripple them from funding the kind of dirty tricks they're spending billions of dollars to promote.
Every school needs to promote physical fitness & they need to at least double their current efforts whatever they are. I think part of that problem is half of the teachers I see in the elementary schools are quite overweight.
I think the government has a great interest in combating that.
And they need to combat the mental disease fostered on billions of US people by at least in part) constantly showing them pictures of poor, fattening, but attractive tasty and expensive food.
The government also needs to do something to promote exercise among the civilian population, and I don't know what. A lot of these folks are so fat and weak that to make them walk any distance is a near death sentence.
What science has discovered is that a common factor among nearly all people with type 2 diabetes is lack of exercise: particularly lack of daily walking.
My mom is 87. She has never been a particularly logical person. She watched a lot of television and was well indoctrinated by the American consumer media brainwash. She learned to blame everything on something else and to love junk food.
She was continually overeating and has gotten very little routine exercise in the course of her life. In other words as a housewife she was a crummy housekeeper and didn't spend a lot of effort on fancy food preparation.
Consequently she's in bad shape, overweight, weak, and suffering from all the ills of diabetes. She was never taller than 5 foot 7. At one point she was topping 325 pounds by a broad margin.
She's lost 140 lbs but I think a lot of that is morbidity and inability to digest and the fact that she overspent herself out of an all-you-can-eat establishment. She is fairly senile. 4 years ago we put her in a place where she has a controlled diet & 24hr assistance.
I watched her run up a hospital bill last week that would have basically wiped out a good fraction of my retirement money. It included two ambulance trips with the fire department in attendance (5 Guys + fire truck and ambulance.)
There were lots of tests both times & many hours in the emergency. Mom was four days in hospital cardiac, private room. $$$$$
This was not her first rodeo. No, the costs involved have been enormous, through a stroke and three heart attacks, and a Litany of other minor and major surgeries throughout her life.
Because Dad was a lifer in the military, mom has healthcare for life. (I doubt they do that for you GI's anymore.) Anyhow between that and Medicare, the whole bill was picked up by insurance (which means of course it was picked up by the American taxpayer.)
Okay this is where I start to sound like Simon Legree.
I look around in this city and what I see is: no one walks, everyone drives, and nearly everyone over 25 is overweight or on their way.
Restaurants are more popular than ever and they are springing up everywhere. The money spent to sell fast food is incredible, exceeding the total budgets of many small countries.
I'm convinced that 90% of the diabetes problems in America are simply caused by too rich diet too many calories and more than anything too little exercise.
And I am 100% convinced that the cost to provide medical care in the future, to all of these people who flounder, will more than double our current 20 trillion dollar debt.
Particularly if government controls the Healthcare System, and we have mandated insurance, and the current lobbying/graft practices continue.
I don't think the general population has a clue how our health care bill will balloon as the boomers and children of indulgent baby boomers go over the cliff like lemmings.
I think the FCC has a clear mandate to prohibit fast food & junk food advertising in the media, and thus cut out a huge portion of their ill-gotten income.
Also cripple them from funding the kind of dirty tricks they're spending billions of dollars to promote.
Every school needs to promote physical fitness & they need to at least double their current efforts whatever they are. I think part of that problem is half of the teachers I see in the elementary schools are quite overweight.
I think the government has a great interest in combating that.
And they need to combat the mental disease fostered on billions of US people by at least in part) constantly showing them pictures of poor, fattening, but attractive tasty and expensive food.
The government also needs to do something to promote exercise among the civilian population, and I don't know what. A lot of these folks are so fat and weak that to make them walk any distance is a near death sentence.
What science has discovered is that a common factor among nearly all people with type 2 diabetes is lack of exercise: particularly lack of daily walking.
