Comments on: Cleveland Clinic on CNN

By: frank uible

frank uible — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:10:09 +0000

You’re taking this silliness way too seriously.

By: JeffZ

JeffZ — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:49:53 +0000

Frank, congrats. The comment notification for your last comment was my 10,000th message in my gmail inbox. Alas, there is no prize or reward, but just thought you’d like to know.

By: frank uible

frank uible — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:43:55 +0000

Are we bringing back the concept of “deservedness” into the field of welfare as it existed in the days when charity was mostly privately funded?

By: jeffz

jeffz — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:55:30 +0000

By the way, I don’t pretend to understand how best to reform health care in a cost-effective way that won’t involve some real sacrifices in quality. No one honest really does. But it seems like, per Cosgrove’s comments above, one aspect of reform that is a an absolute no-brainer is to seriously incentivize, via rate changes, people to exercise, eat healthy, and certainly not smoke. That is of course tricky in and of itself, as you don’t want to punish people who just have a natural disposition towards being overweight in particular and there are serious enforcement / monitoring issues (short of having a national network of creepy guys in closets a la “Cat’s Eye”), but it seems to make sense. As does devoting a far greater percentage of resources to preventative medicine vs. life-extending measures very late in life, again an extremely tricky issue but one that is far more sensible, effective and efficient viewed holistically.