January 10, 2013
From Beaumont
to Boston
to Bellevue,
Americans are desperate for relief from an uncommon problem: an illness that
isn’t their own damn fault.
The 2013 flu
season is pummeling the populace with Kimbo Slice-like ferocity. Those
who were struck will soon be followed by millions of new sufferers -- the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention says that the bug has arrived five weeks
ahead of schedule, and this strain is a nasty one.
Influenza
victims bear little blame for their condition. Unlike their friends and relatives
in the Sun Belt, residents of cold-weather regions must hunker down, dry and
stuffy, for the bulk of the winter. Unless you’re a trustafarian, work is
unavoidable, too, and germs abound in even well-cleaned offices, factories, and
stores. It’s wise to get the flu vaccine, but when pressed, public-health
officials admit that the needle’s effectiveness is just 60 percent. Hand-washing
has its limits.
In addition to
ubiquitous, ever-mutating viruses, bad genes and out-of-the-blue calamities contribute
to healthcare costs. Children with leukemia don’t make themselves sick. Neither
do law-abiding motorists t-boned by drunk drivers.
But in most
cases, ailing Americans have only themselves to blame.
Mean-spirited?
Insensitive? Kooky? The data make it clear that treatment for lifestyle-induced
afflictions dominate medical expenditures. A 2009 analysis in Health Affairs reached the jaw-dropping
conclusion that “three-quarters of the $2 trillion-plus that we spend on U.S.
health care each year goes to paying the bills for chronic illness:
cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, cancers, diabetes, arthritis, high blood
pressure, depression.”
Let’s start
with tobacco. Cigarette-puffing causes heart disease, stoke, cancer, bronchitis,
emphysema, and birth defects. Yet despite relentless PSAs and confiscatory
taxes, 20
percent of Americans won’t give up their coffin nails.
At least
smokers, kicked out of many public spaces, need to move around to enjoy their vice.
A survey taken in the late 1990s -- years before Call of Duty
-- found that 40 percent of adults are completely sedentary, i.e., they never “engage in any exercises, sports,
or physically active hobbies in their leisure time.” Average
TV-watching is up to five hours a day, according to the Harvard School of
Public Health.
Cheap
food + couch potatoism = obesity. The level of fattitude in the U.S.
is revolting. Last year the Journal of
the American Medical Association reported that a third of adults are obese (not overweight, obese), a share that
has undergone “little change over the past 12 years.” We’re twice as plump as the Czech Republic, and ten times portlier than South Korea. No one is ignorant of the facts.
Packing on the pounds increases the likelihood of diabetes, heart disease,
cancer, hypertension, and stoke. No matter. There’s always gastric-bypass
surgery, right?
A
just-published, 405-page tome from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine cobbled together the scary
stats. “U.S. Health in
International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health” found that while “life
expectancy and survival rates” have “improved dramatically
over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more
injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries.” When judged
against the average of 16 peers, a list that included Germany, Australia,
Japan, Norway, and Canada,
the U.S.
fared worse in “nine health domains,” including heart disease, HIV/AIDS,
substance abuse, and “adverse birth outcomes.”
Americans’
refusal to clean up their acts imposes a horrendous financial burden. If you are
unaware of the historical numbers, it’s best to sit down. Here is the last
half-century of national
healthcare spending, per capita, adjusted to 2010 dollars:
1960 $1,124
1970 $2,059
1980 $2,989
1990 $4,861
2000 $6,198
2010 $8,401
Expenditures
exploded by a factor of 7.5 -- during
an era when reliable research about nutrition proliferated, as did widespread
recognition of the value of exercise. Amazingly, as society learned more about
how to be healthy, its habits grew increasingly injurious.
The future
promises more of the same. The citizenry has grown accustomed to forcing others
-- either employer-paid insurance companies or taxpayers -- to subsidize its hard-livin’
ways. By further isolating its “beneficiaries” from the hidden costs of their poor
choices, Obamacare is an immense step backward. (Republicans, honoring
convention, are too gutless to tackle the true causes of the healthcare crisis.
Might offend voters.)
Over the last
five decades, America,
once the most grown-up nation on the planet, has regressed into an embarrassing
infantilism. It wants endless government goodies without high taxes and debt, happy
children without two-parent households, and health without nutrition and
exercise. It’s time for a massive booster shot of maturity.
D. Dowd Muska (www.dowdmuska.com) writes about government, economics, and technology. Follow him on Twitter @dowdmuska.
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