Fixing health care starts at McDonalds

American health care is in a state of crisis.  Medical costs have risen so much, the present system is breaking down.

It would be nice to think administrative changes could actually provide some sort of fix.  But tinkering with the present system may make things worse – because the administrative side of health care is not the problem.

The problem isn’t the insurance companies.  It’s not the doctors or the rest of the medical community.  It isn’t malpractice attorneys. 

The sad part - the real problem is us.  We, as a society, utilize three quarters of our health care dollars treating diseases that are directly caused by improper diets.  We treat diseases we simply don’t have to have.

Cardiac care in the US is the best example.  Depending on whose figures you use, cardiac care costs the US somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 billion a year.  It consumes 20 to 25 percent of all health care dollars.  And the overwhelming majority of all cardiac problems are caused directly by an improper diet.

Type II diabetes is another good example.  Once considered “adult onset” diabetes, it is now sweeping through teenage America.  The costs consume over 10% (and rising) of our health care dollars.  Here again, the overwhelming majority of these problems are caused directly from an improper diet.

We as a society have learned to accept quadruple bypass operations, stents, statins, hypertensive drugs, bariatric surgery, obesity, osteoporosis, gout, hemorrhoids and more as the “norm”.  When in reality, the overwhelming majority of these problems are directly the result of long term improper diet.

Until someone has the courage to loudly speak the truth on this issue, Michelle’s garden will have a larger affect on true health care reform that all the tinkering Barak has in mind.