It's a challenge. So is the rising cost of health care. We just had open enrollment at my place of employment and our premiums went up 10%. The increase in chronic diseases in the U.S. is out of control. Leading to more doctor visits, leading to more prescription drugs, leading to increased health care costs for all. It's not about how do we improve our healthcare system and healthcare for all. It's about how do we address and work to decrease the chronic diseases which are overtaking and killing our population. I don't know how to solve the problem but i'm on board w/ experts who are willing to take it on. RFK is not an expert but i feel very strongly he will put the right experts in the right positions to try and solve this problem. I hope he reaches out to casey means and hires her in some capacity to help with the mission.
Hopefully RFK will do some reasonable things with his new position. I have serious doubts, but I hope he does.
Lifestyle choices (diet and exercise) are critically important. Now, how will he get a massive agri-business/food industry and American culture to change? That's a great question. For many decades, agri-business has been able to market any kind of product they want, and we gobble it all down.
We are obese, hypertensive, and suffer from hypercholesterolemia and hyperlipidemia. All of this makes us die prematurely from cardiovascular disease and cancer related to our sedentary lifestyle and metabolic syndrome. We should be worrying about total calories, saturated fat, sugar, and the like. The chemicals (pesticides) may also be harmful but the main driver is the actual food we eat. That, and our sedentary lifestyle.
How does RFK propose to change these business and cultural factors? Michelle Obama was skewered by the media when she talked about kids eating healthier school lunches. Will these same folks embrace a similar message, given the fact that it's a different messenger?
Will RFK seek to use government mandates to make changes to the food supply? That seems unlikely to come from a party that loathes excessive regulation. I think more rules around what goes into food make sense, but this seems like upside-down world for the right wing to apply more regulation to huge agribusinesses.
Will education work? I dunno. It hasn't so far.
I do think that health care financing is an area that is ripe for improvement. Incentives for providers (not to mention patients) are misaligned. Providers should get more money to keep people healthy, not to do heart surgeries. We will still need heart surgery, of course, but there are no real incentives to reward providers for fantastic primary care (although there is some work on value based care/ value based contracting). I personally would love to see patients (the public) financially incentivized more for healthy choices and healthy outcomes, but I don't think that will happen.
How do we get out of this mess? I sure don't know. I think culture trumps everything, and our culture loves meat, sugar, and alcohol (myself included).
I also just hope RFK doesn't make all vaccines voluntary. That's a poor public health decision. I agree with you, in that I hope he listens to actual public health experts and researchers, as most of them will be very much against this sort of thing.
I really appreciate these kinds of discussions, which are different than the left and right just yelling at each other.
I HOPE good things happen. What I think will happen is a bunch of weird people who have no knowledge will be making huge decisions about our health care system. I just hope those in charge listen to the smart people.