How fat is your state?

We have diabetes and heart disease epidemics on our hands. The number of people with type 2 (i.e. preventable if you aren't so fat) diabetes has increased by 86 percent in the last decade alone. That is mind numbing to think about. 21 million people with a serious disease because they have allowed themselves to get fat and sedentary. The costs have been placed by some at $92 billion a year in direct medical costs, and another $40 billion in indirect costs (loss of work, disability, death). Quibble with the exact number, but it is billions of dollars a year that are taxing the health care system in more than just the obvious dollars sense. There are a lot of things overwhelming our health care system and there are many of the inefficiencies you pointed out, which drive up costs. But you are wrong. The fact that Americans take worse care of themselves than ever and we have become an obese nation IS a primary reason we can't afford to take better care of more people. If people weren't so fat, and they didn't smoke and partake in other harmful behaviors, they wouldn't need to rely on expensive medical care and state of the art advances to keep them alive. And the people with serious uncontrollable diseases wouldn't be being burdened--and in many cases squeezed out--to the extent they are, by the crisis being created by the people who require what should be unnecessary health care.

 

I don't have any need to try to obscure one bad, stupid thing by saying it doesn't matter because there is another bad, stupid thing contributing to a problem. This thread was about obesity. I made a point about the strain obesity puts on our health care system. It seemed like a more relevant point than "hey, let's just forget the billions it is costing us and make an unrelated point about drug companies, which aren't the issue when it comes to obesity."

One thing U.S. drug companies have done, though, is contribute thousands of state of the art treatments (exponentially, the advances over the last 30 years have been staggering compared to the hundreds of years before) that have made up for the fact that people worldwide seem so intent on killing themselves with mind-boggling behavior. The drug companies profit pretty nicely, but they are the ones who are actually keeping all these obese people (and smokers) alive, with things like blood pressure and cholesterol medications that are common today, but didn't exist 20 years ago (when there was less need for them). Lipitor and Norvasc are by far the most commonly prescribed medications in the United States. The drug companies may be evil in your mind for profiting off inventing and marketing those medications, but 1) They have done a ton to keep people who seem intent on killing themselves alive and 2) without the obesity problem we have created for ourselves, it cuts the demand for lipitor and norvasc by at least three quarters.

 

Nope. Not always the case. Sorry I stated it in such an absolute way--even if your mom is a rare exception, not the rule now. Some people have a genetic predisposition to Type 2 diabetes. Those numbers were always relatively low and defined, before we became so fat as a nation. Your mom has become the exception, not the rule, if her lifestyle has not been a contributing factor. The reason we have seen an 86 percent increase in the number of diabetics in the last decade alone is not some freak genetic anomaly. Lifestyle factors--obesity and a sedentary lifestyle--account for what we are seeing. There have always been diabetics--not just those with juvenile diabetes. The skyrocketing numbers and the costs associated with it are not the result of people with a genetic problem. They're the result of people with a lifestyle problem.