Cato Conference: "Overcharged Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care"

The 4-hour conference was held in Washington, DC June 8th.  While I am most sympathetic with the purpose and aim of the conference, viz., to reduce health care costs to the consumer, I am of the opinion that the participants missed the boat on this one!

They had it within grasp when they pointed out in the second panel discussion that obesity rose dramatically since the inception of the 1980s till today, although it hasn't peaked yet! The real question should be (to my mind) why all the obese people in the United States as compared with 12 other leading countries?  The reasons may be myriad--fraud, waste, abuse--mentioned;  but near or at the top of the list has to be the use of both advertising and marketing fields by today's corporate America.  For, through packaging and selling, foodstuff items wet the appetites of rapacious American consumers in the marketplace.  The techniques developed initially in university research labs became available to corporate America just after the 1960s; and there's no end in sight as to the ingenuity of the technocrats in these two fields by corporations such as Coca-Cola, Starbuck's Coffee, Tyson Chicken, Popeye's, Chick-fil-A, Burger-King and McDonald's. The food-basket at the Super-Market is chock-full of goodies to savor and delight both the youth and the old alike!  Oh, yes, have we forgotten the alcoholic beverage commercials drenching the airwaves from noon to 2 AM tempting the youth as well as their parents?

Indeed, the American response is to consume from the time of rising to the time going to bed!  And, if it's not to eat food, it's to swallow the medicines needed to counteract some of the effects of overeating upon their inner organs--stomach pills, aspirin, and so on, until at last the overeating causes more serious problems, e.g., to the digestive system; plus an onslaught of overall malaise.  That is to say, the typical overeater eventually panics.  He is beset with a yearning to break clear from the feelings of nausea that overwhelm him and sap him of his energy and vitality!  He experiences a breaking-point to his human rationality; wherein he must succumb to any course of action for relief suggested to him--the latter by some well-meaning health-care providers!  At this rock-bottom state of mind he enters, he will try any curative posed him--except, LAY-OFF EATING MORE!

So, why do Americans pay too much for health care?  Not that corporate America doesn't take advantage of him in the condition he's been reduced to through overindulgence, but when all is said and done, it's because he panics seeking a sure-temporary palliative that uplifts his spirits from the lowly, awful state he's come to experience!  He must have hope in the health-care provider to work a miracle once again over his obesity, involving the continuing series of self-initiated marathons in food consumption!

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Here is a somewhat humorous response from Chuck Darling at Miriam's Kitchen to the above rumination--the response nearly verbatim but with some editing on my part:

"In my relative youth, age sixty-one as compared to Moses' lifespan of 120, I find that all foods are clean, if accepted with thanks to God.

I have lived well, without healthcare, since (about) September, 2001.  That's seventeen years.  My outdoor life--sleeping on the streets in DC--has not sunburned me; nor have I succumbed to Snowmageddon, Hurricane Sandy, or Hurricane Iris.

I'm living without hernia, avoiding the complications of synthetic mesh.  The important part of daily life is remembering your Creator in all that you do.  When I chew recycled cigarette butts, I toss a bit of  tobacco to the four winds as an offering to the Great Spirit.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus said God is a Spirit."