TW: We can debate health care reform until we are blue in the face. As this piece points out though, if we as a nation continue to live lifestyles which beg for health problems then we will likely just end up spinning our wheels. One sees these type stats and anecdotes frequently but they never cease to amaze.
From Economist:
"...The cultural obstacles to all this, however, may be greater than Mr Obama’s lean, sporty advisers understand. Consider the shoppers at the Save-A-Lot supermarket in Hamlin, West Virginia. At the beginning of the month, when the food stamps arrive, they snap up buckets of lard so big that the label says: “Warning—Children can fall into bucket and drown.” The manager, Key-Ray Adkins, shrugs: “People now say lard isn’t good for you. But it’s what we grew up with.”
Hamlin is near the Huntington metro area, one of the unhealthiest in America. Some 77% of adults are overweight; an incredible 46% are clinically obese. Some 13% of adults have diabetes, 22% of those over the age of 45 have heart disease, and nearly half the over-65s have lost all their teeth.
The local cuisine dates back to the days when people burned off calories at work. But the coal mines these days use more machines and fewer people. “That’s good, in that people aren’t getting torn apart [in mining accidents],” says Rob Walker, a local doctor. “But bad in that they are gaining a lot of weight.” Some 26% of West Virginians smoke too, despite the warning on every packet and 16% of the men chew tobacco, the highest rate in the country.
Because West Virginians are unhealthy, they cost a lot to insure. The Riedel-Wilks building firm in Huntington, for example, saw its premiums soar by nearly a quarter in the past year because the boss fell ill. Paul Riedel, the firm’s president, needed $58,000-worth of treatment for diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A couple of his middle-aged colleagues racked up large bills, too. “A big illness can knock [a small firm] sideways,” says Mr Riedel."
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