This article in the New York Times suggests that market-driven health care is unduly influenced by insurance companies and by drug companies and their lobbyists, causing greatly increased expense to tax-payers.
My own take on health-care reform is that we need wherever possible to look to natural ways of improving health. - For example, a person who never takes up smoking is unlikely to get lung cancer or emphysema, and much less likely than smokers to get bronchitis or COPD. Smoking, of course, is much less of a problem than it used to be in the western world, because eventually the facts about how it harmed health became known despite the lies and obfuscations of the tobacco industry.
The greatest health problem in the world today is the growing incidence and severity of obesity and the illnesses largely caused by obesity - high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, most cancers and many more. Rather than individuals suffering all the pain and difficulties of these illnesses, and society bearing the huge financial cost of health care for them, surely it is better to prevent the illnesses in the first place.
Now you have almost certainly heard/read about how eating less salt and salty food reduces high blood pressure and reduces the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, most cancers and many more. - Doesn't that ring a bell with you? - The diseases that are reduced by eating less salt/sodium are the same diseases that tend to be caused by obesity. - Are you thinking what I'm thinking? - I hope you are. - That cutting down on salt and salty food will also reduce obesity. - That reducing salt in food is the simplest, cheapest health-care measure society can take.
Most young people are not too bothered about high blood pressure; it seems a long way away in time to worry about that. Most of the other illnesses I have mentioned also tend to be thought of as the diseases of old age. - But if the public were to be told that obesity could be reduced by eating less salt and salty food then I reckon there would be a lot more effort put into cutting down on salt.
So why are people not told about salt reduction being the safe, natural, easy way to lose weight? - Well part of the reason is the same as it was long ago with smoking. - The smoking industry profited by obscuring the facts about how smoking damages health; the dieting industry would rather you buy its diet foods, diet drinks and diet books than have you find out that the easiest, safest and fastest way to lose excess weight is to cut down on sodium. And the drug companies would rather you take drugs to lower your blood pressure than that you cut down on salt to lower your blood pressure. And so on. You can fill in the gaps yourself.
If you care about your own health and that of your family, and if you care about the escalating financial costs to taxpayers of health care based on drugs rather than on healthy eating, then spread the word about how cutting down on salt really does improve health and reduce the need for drugs.
Written by Margaret Wilde
Margaret is the author of www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
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