American's Appetite: Demanding the Worst and Hoping for the Best

The centers for Medicare and Medicade Services realeased a report predicting future health care costs up to the year 2016 demonstrates the possible outcomes of the current national health trends. What is paramount to this issue is the combination of a sedentary lifestyle, as seen in the chart illustrating the increasing cost of healthcare in the U.S., and an increasingly unhealthy diet. When one considers the fact that a staggering 65% of the U.S. population is overweight or obese, it is not surprising that the federal government is forecasting health care costs to rise to approximately $ 4.1 trillion a year, or about 16% of the GDP. Another factor is the increasing age of the overall population, as baby boomers near retirement. The general trend for the elderly is the onset of health problems, generally dealing with the cardiovascular or circulatory systems, such as diabetes of heart disease, along with a wide range of other health problems. In addition to age, unhealthy eating habits also contribute to the ever worsening health condition of the average American.

According to the Forbes article, the effects of the increasing healthcare costs in the U.S. on the pharmaceutical industry will affect both health providers and suppliers of pharmaceuticals and also "U.S. prescription drug spending should reach $497.5 billion by 2016, more than double the expected level for 2006." Federal expenses on prescription drugs are expected to grow at a faster rate (8.6%) than the growth rate of overall healthcare spending (6.9%). The higher rate of pharmaceutical spending is due in large part to the increasing effectiveness of drugs and the change in the role of pharmacists from a position of supplier to that of primary healthcare advisor, almost on par with a physician. Thus, we see that unhealthy eating habits, coupled with age and an inactive lifestyle have necessitated increases in national healthcare spending. Additionally, the expansion of the role of the pharmaceutical industry in providing healthcare to the average America explains the higher rate of spending for pharmaceuticals.

One only needs to travel as far as his local supermarket to see how poorly the average American eats. For example, a recent product released by a major American food producer, Jimmy Dean, illustrates just how severe the disparity is between what Americans are willing to purchase and what foods are actually healthy. The product in question is a sausage wrapped in a chocolate chip pancake, on a stick. Now the nutritional value of the product is beyond question negligible, anything wrapped with a chocolate chip pancake, or “on a stick” is most likely unhealthy, not to mention that sausages are mostly made from animal by-products. The thing to keep in mind is that Jimmy Dean expects this product to sell; they expect consumers to either be completely ignorant of the health risks associate with the product, or to disregard them altogether, either way; the existence of such an unhealthy snack on the market makes a statement about the health standards of the average consumer. And this is the big picture, Americans no longer demand healthy foods from the market, and nor do they expect a healthy lifestyle from themselves.

When one accepts these ideas as the truth it is easy to understand why health care costs will double in less then ten years, and why heart disease kills almost a thousand people a day.