A look at the cost of health care PIE—in the USA
According to KaiserEDU.org (See link below), there are three primary drivers of healthcare cost increases in recent years:
Technology and prescription drugs — Some analysts state that the availability of more expensive, state-of-the-art medical technologies and drugs fuels health care spending for development costs and because they generate demand for more intense, costly services even if they are not necessarily cost-effective.
Rise in chronic diseases – It is estimated that health care costs for chronic disease treatment account for over 75% of national health expenditures. In particular, there has been tremendous focus on the rise in rates of overweight and obesity and their contribution to chronic illnesses and health care spending. The changing nature of illness has sparked a renewed interest in the possible role for prevention to help control costs.
Administrative costs – At least 7% of health care expenditures are estimated to go toward for the administrative costs of government health care programs and the net cost of private insurance.
Leveraging the simple concept of maximizing the percent of your calories from whole, plant-based foods
The good news. The one bit of good news in all of the above is highlighted in green—a renewed interest in prevention. But the problem is that what the industry calls prevention is not prevention at all. It’s just early detection of disease. It amounts to nothing more than a convenient way for the physicians and pharmaceuticals to recruit new customers for their products and services.
Nowhere in the entire website was there a single mention of the importance of teaching people how to take charge of their health with their food choices—a move that would greatly reduce the costs in all three of the “driving categories” listed above. Want to know why? Like all other members of our healthcare system, Kaiser gets a piece of the pie—and the bigger the pie, the more they get.
Here’s what that PIE looks like:
The Bottom Line. Every slice of the above $2.8 trillion pie (2012) could be trimmed by 70 to 80% with a nationwide shift to a whole foods, plant-based diet. Yet, not one person within the thousands of organizations represented above has a financial incentive for us to be healthy.
Therefore, the change will not come from within the system, but from outside. It will come from concerned leaders in business who have a powerful incentive to make their employees healthy.
Those rare few who choose to be first will be rewarded with a much more profitable enterprise. Eventually, those CEOs who choose not to instill a true “wellness culture” within their companies—will not be able to compete with those who do. (Consecutive daily blog #639)
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