On 5/24/07, Mauro Diotallevi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > The laziness issue is that too many people eat unhealthy foods and live > unhealthy lifestyles and then go complain to their doctors when they > become > unhealthy.
And I think we can credit some very effective and profitable marketing for part of this behavior. Wish I knew how to address that problem, but I don't. Education, perhaps, but if they're competing with each other, marketing has a lot more money. They expect modern medicine to be able to fix any problem they > happen to acquire along the way, instead of taking the responsibility and > doing the work it takes to stay healthy. Our doctors and nurses -- and > our > health care dollars -- are taken up treating people who could have > avoided > their health problems by making healthier decisions. Reducing the number > of > people in the health care system would go a long way towards fixing the > system. By letting those who are to blame for their own illnesses just die? ;-) Seriously, though, I'd have a hard time differentiating personal from systemic causes for unhealthly lifestyles when there's so much effort invested in advocating them in advertising, marketing and so forth. People are social creatures; it's naive to imagine that some sort of "Just say no" mentality would make all those problems go away. I'm not saying you're making that argument, but I've certainly heard it. The money issue (part one) is that big health care companies are typically > much more interested in making money than in actually helping people Those that are private corporations and thus are legally obligated to be more interested in making money than anything else. They're subject to shareholder litigation if they don't maximize profits. This is not, to me, an obviously good legal structure for organizations that provide basic human services. Ditto for the insurance companies, of course. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
