The push is on for fixing our healthcare system.The nation has finally realized that we're financially busted, and will be ever more so in the coming years (even if we fix the health care system.)
This current push is a good thing, really. Senator Tom Harkin and Newt Gingrich both have opinions on how things should be fixed - who should pay, etc. (Click on post title to see Harkins article and link to Gingrich.) We do need to embrace prevention and public health. But those things are not the whole of it.
Some of the things that Mr. Harkin brings up are true. Lifestyle changes will make a difference in a person's health. We've been told that for the past three decades - Jane Fonda and Susan Powter made a fortune telling us this!, but our obesity rates and general rate of ill-health has skyrocketed over that same timeframe. Many politicians compare the US health and illness stats to other countries around the world. They seem to say "tsk, tsk, Americans aren't measuring up" without admitting that there is more to a healthy lifestyle than eating better and exercising more. Europeans have a different approach to life overall. And they don't hit the gym at any greater rate than we do in the US. They have a broader approach. Here are some examples:
*Minimum of 4 weeks vacation from work per year in European countries, regardless of the company you work for or your job title. When you know you have money coming in, and have good, restful amount of time to relax, you tend to feel less stressed.
*6 months to a year of paid maternity leave given for each mother and ofen times the father, too, in a great many European countries.
*35-38 hour work weeks as norm, no push for overtime, no expectation, generally, of 50+ hour work weeks as a "salaried" employee.
*A national definition of, and culture of, success based on social relationships, instead of strictly wealth and status accumulation. This includes leisurely meal times and fewer planned activities for children or adults to have to squeeze into their day.
*Walkable cities - which means at the minimum sidewalks for walking on, and better, convenient, public transport so that physical movement is much more a part of a person's day. Higher population densities with shops in walking distance help to keep folks walking instead of driving.
*Apartment or home design based on higher densities and older infrastructure. They have smaller living units with fewer, smaller storage areas - accumulation of stuff not practical or pleasant to have around. Re-wiring of units is prohibitively expensive in a 500 year old building! Adjustment to infrastructure capacity as part of life. For example, few really old buildings in Italy have air conditioning, so people sweat more, which is generally healthier.
*Strong food regulations/rules- rejection of genetically modified foods and over processed foods, and a strong SLOW FOOD movement.
*Smaller portion sizes in restaurants; many restaurants have community seating; and you are not expected to leave within an hour of being served.
*Children attend boarding schools at significantly higher rates in European countries than in the US. Those boarding school kids come home on weekends, holidays, and extended vacation time. How many US parents would be less stressed and have more time for healthier living if their kids were in boarding school all week?
That list paints a very different picture of life than life in the US. In the US we seem to have an AND problem. We need to exercise, AND eat right, AND work lots of hours, AND be successful, AND have a big house, AND a nice car or two or three, AND look youthful, AND have superior skills, AND stay connected with our familes and friends, AND be healthy. Pile it all on, then wait for the conflicted feelings to set in. The big house and car in the suburbs without sidewalks or playgrounds means you have to drive the kids everywhere to play, you have to drive to get to the store and the gym. Everyone lives so far away from each other you can't see them much. Everyone is so busy trying to do it all, all by themselves, that relationships dry up, and stress builds up. To make Americans healthier, we're going to have to change the way we live overall.
If we just tell ourselves we have to eat (organic) whole foods and exercise more, but our infrastructure doesn't support it, we will fail. If we subsidize corn and wheat so much that bread and chips and sugary snacks are cheaper and quicker than the more expensive healthier whole foods, we are not going to succeed. If we keep junk food, pizzas and burgers on demand in the schools for the money it brings into the school board's coffers, we are not going to slim down our kids. When we can't do it all, we see these aspects of life as OR choices. The way we have set up our infrastructure, and our expectations force them to be OR choices.
When I was a kid we had physical education classes, home economics classes, and health classes. We had to be tested for the Presidential Physical Fitness award, and walk to school if we lived within a mile of the school. We had neighborhood playgrounds that had teams with coaches, and sidewalks to use to walk to them. We didn't have pizza on demand in the cafeteria, and the only burgers we got were of the soy-burger variety. We drank real fruit juice and half-pints of milk, and went outside for a half hour after lunch for recess, or to the gym in extreme weather. We put healthy stuff into our bodies and moved around alot more than kids do today. We need to get back to all of those things if we are to get healthy again. Free health insurance to see the doctor if we get sick isn't going to change any of these things, but it might help those who are sick, and start us thinking about, and making better, broader decisions about how to keep from getting sick.
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