Considering the big picture

by Kakofonous

In light of Eyck's recent post on health care reform, I thought I'd talk a little about the bigger picture of the contentious issue. An article entitled "Healthcare and Food Policy: Part of the Same Conversation" from the food blog Civil Eats gives a good perspective about what I'm trying to say. Essentially, we can't talk about health care without also talking about health in general: the health of our population, the health of our environment, and the health of the economy. Ignoring this fundamental truth has lead us to the mess that we're in. As Paul Krugman illustrated a few days ago, the market is a system that simply doesn't work for health care. The immensely profitable health industry, while filling many pockets, has, at the same time, left too many Americans out in the cold. While it may seem easy to argue that keeping the health system the way it is (or even freeing more of it up to the market) is beneficial for the economy (more money moving, so the logic goes, is better for everyone), it is quite difficult to have a productive workforce (and, by extension, a productive economy) when the health care and insurance systems have every worker in a stranglehold the minute he or she gets sick.

In a different (but related) vein, more directly addressed by the Civil Eats article, we can't think about health care without thinking about food as well. Obesity adds an estimated $140 billion per year to health costs. We can't tackle this mounting problem without also acknowledging that the American diet, which is based on unsustainable industrial agriculture, has to play some part. Neither preventative measures against obesity nor measures against climate change cannot hope to succeed when the average American child, for example, has chicken nuggets shipped from an industrial production plant as his or her only palatable option for lunch. Instead, why not encourage local economic development and healthier eating by purchasing from a local organic farm, or, better yet, have children produce and harvest their own food?

Once we see that the issues we have traditionally tackled separately from health care, like the health of our environment and economy, will really only be effectively addressed as individual elements of a systemic issue, can we begin to solve the health crisis we face.