Many things we do in life seem to generate counter-intuitive results not because life is counter-intuitive, but rather because life is complex and the thinking in our analyses of life is not complex enough.
So, as our society struggles to cheapen the cost of good health care and to extend access to good health care to a maximum number of people, a Dutch study has clearly implied that one effective way to save on health care costs is to encourage people to become obese and to also "smoke like a chimney."
Why?
Well, the study found that, in the long run, life is so prolonged by good health that lifetime health care for healthy people is about 120% as costly as health care for those who eat and smoke themselves to death.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22995659/
In other words, analytically, if avoiding the cost of health care is our primary goal, not health, not life, then keeping people healthy is more expensive.
There is a brutal way to understand the problem.
Who is more expensive to care for? These folks...
...or these folks?...
So, as our society struggles to cheapen the cost of good health care and to extend access to good health care to a maximum number of people, a Dutch study has clearly implied that one effective way to save on health care costs is to encourage people to become obese and to also "smoke like a chimney."
Why?
Well, the study found that, in the long run, life is so prolonged by good health that lifetime health care for healthy people is about 120% as costly as health care for those who eat and smoke themselves to death.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22995659/
In other words, analytically, if avoiding the cost of health care is our primary goal, not health, not life, then keeping people healthy is more expensive.
There is a brutal way to understand the problem.
Who is more expensive to care for? These folks...
...or these folks?...
.jpg)
working in a large company that does lots of IT outsourcing, as another round of 'onshore' RIFs (reduction in force , aka layoffs) comes along, the lucky survivors may meet in the isles and discuss the doomish future feelings we all have (the didn't get me this time, but, maybe next time). We discuss the economics of it. They pay someone 13,000 overseas to do our work. They may hire 3 people to do our job, and its still cheaper than keeping us. We ask of ourselves out loud what we could do to compete.
ReplyDeleteI answer them with several things. I'm the only one who answers. They don't like it.
First on my list:
1) DIE OF THE FIRST DISEASE THAT YOU GET
2) SUFFER ANY INJURIES YOU MAY GET THROUGHOUT LIFE. IT WILL HURT A LITTLE LESS AS THE YEARS GO ON
3)MOVE SOUTH SO YOU NEED NO HEAT
4) Live in northern lattitudes and need heat? Ditch oil/gas . . . Burn whatever you can gather. Its half way thru winter and there is nothing left to gather, see item 3
5) live in a house with 4 other families. Industry can no longer afford to pay the former owner of your house 400,000 dollars to start
I can't afford to pay the guy fixing my roof enough for him to keep his $400,000 house either (with all his other customers) nor can I afford the price of the goods he would use to fix my roof to keep those manufactures and their employees houses and health benefits . . .
Its not just healthcare folks. We're in a downward spiral. Our concerns of healthcare are just part of a bigger deal. People's home economics are in shambles. Running up bills putting it on credit card for years and never answering 'who is going to pay for it'. The credit card pays for it, right?
Well that mind frame is voted in to all levels of government now.
Get out the credit card, Obama, congress has another big ticket item to buy.
I don't even blame presidents for this.
this is Congress. Senate, even more so representatives.
Redistribution of wealth hides this and makes the taxation too far removed from the end product to realize just how much we are charging to that giant credit card. Just like making the acquisition of a product too far removed from payment for goods thru the use of credit cards.
I blame city/count/state/fed for this. Bad fed's for taxing us so much, but hey city councilman, get that federal grant so we can have shiny new LED street lights.
Health care is just one of the painfully biggest examples that congress doesn't have the faintest idea how deep into a hole they are spending us.
And yes, i subscribe to your contrarian viewpoints. From the burying of paper rather than recycling, and eat drink smoke and be merry for tomorrow you die cheaply. I subscribe to this. Sometimes its surprising in how many various situations thinking like this works
ReplyDelete