Dear President-elect Obama

 

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

Our healthcare system is a mess. Medicare and social security in its present form will result in a 100 trillion dollar a year deficit in 75 years. The solution to Repairing the Healthcare System is relatively simple. The key to the solution is social responsibility by all stakeholders involved in the healthcare system and individual responsibility by the consumers and potential consumers of healthcare.

Unfortunately, stakeholders will not voluntarily be socially responsible and the consumer will assume responsibility only with significant education and incentives. The goal of remaining healthy is subverted advertising of the food industry. The food industry’s advertising has to be redirected to consumer education and not consumer self destruction.

Over the past 2^1/2 years I have analyzed the problems in the healthcare system and presented the solutions to the problems in my blog “Repairing the Healthcare System”. I will review highlights of the problems and the solutions. I have provided links for you to study.

You have promised you will govern for the benefit of people with input from the people and not special interests. I hope this is true.

You will not be able to make the appropriate decisions without appropriate input. I hope my review will come before you. I am asking my readers to help get it before you.

Unfortunately no one asked for the opinion of practicing physicians. The focus of all healthcare policy “experts” is economics.

The problems with the healthcare system are broader than economics. The problems are problems that results from the interrelationship of other societal problems.

Eighty per cent of the healthcare dollars are spent on the complications of chronic diseases. The eighty percent cost to the healthcare system is one trillion six hundred million dollars a year.

You are correct when you say you want to prevent chronic diseases. This is harder than it sounds because chronic disease management is not done as an extension of a physician’s care.

Several chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus and heart disease are mostly a direct result of obesity. The obesity epidemic is interconnected with our energy policy and energy subsidies, farm policies and subsidies, environmental policy and conditioned attitudes toward fast food.

Obesity leads to Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Walk into any Coronary Care Unit in the nation and 80% of the patients with myocardial infarctions are obese and have diabetes mellitus. The complications of Diabetes Mellitus cost the healthcare system 160 billion dollars a year. Eliminating obesity will reduce that incidence of diabetes mellitus by at least 50%. Cheap manufactured food subsided by the government consumes 19% of the fossil fuel we use and results in more that 75% of the obesity in this country.

Michael Pollan points out the problem with or entire food supply system and the impact it has on healthcare, the environment and energy.

“Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change.”

The three problems your presidency has inherited are tightly connected. The repair of each problem has to must be done in a creative way that aligns all the stakeholders incentive with consumers and their health and wellness being the major stakeholder.

Pollen goes on to say “Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them.

Mr. Pollan’s point is the way we grow food and manufacture food stuff is a major reason for obesity and pollution leading to the complications of chronic disease. This results in a 1.6 trillion dollar cost to the healthcare system. It is also major reason for our energy dependence and climate change. All America needs is the will to change. The science is available.

It is going to require a lot of public and congressional education. Congress will be harder to educate than the public because congress is driven by vested interest lobbying. You must help the public create a greater voice than the special interests. The public will then lobby the congress.

Michael Pollan says “the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. “

Michael Pollan's is a brilliant interpreter of farm policy. He should have significant input in your administration. He should perhaps be nominated for Secretary of Agriculture.

Thomas Friedman should be read carefully. He could provide input into determining the resources need to create the paradigm shift necessary to cure the underlying problems of our environment.

America’s coal resource is abundant and cheap. America’s energy companies would love to expand coal burning plants. Beware of the promise of clean coal burning plants. Dirty coal burning plants result in environmental pollution with soot, sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrous oxides. The carbon dioxide footprint is currently not required to be measured. The Environmental Protection Agency does not have a CO₂ emission restriction policy in place. Without counting the harmful long term effects of CO₂ emissions on climate change, coal burning plants presently result in the chronic disease complications of asthma and chronic obstructive lung disease. These diseases result in a one hundred billion dollar a year cost to the healthcare system. These diseases and their complications can be reduced by at least 50% with an effective clean air policy.

My review letter to you is longer than I anticipated. You have very hard decisions to make but if your intent is to be transformational these decisions will be necessary.

The reformatting of the payment system for physicians is not going to accomplish anything but dispirit the medical profession and diminish the effectiveness of a necessary workforce. Physicians are not the villain. I will review who the real villain/villains are.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

Comments

[Coal Processing]

Hi this is the use of coal and lignite to produce liquid transport fuels has been given new importance with the looming "peak oil" crisis.

[Jackson-food]

America has also a problem of food allergy. An allergy to food is when you have an adverse physical reaction to a food item after eating it. Health care department has to take care of quality and healthy food. Thank you!!