The moment these new rules take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.Pollan makes some speculative arguments about how this would play out, focusing mainly on soft drinks, school lunches, and fast food. Question for my MBA 505 students: how could economic incentives be used to discourage obesity?
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What's going on with inflation?
2 years ago
Given that the average age of onset of Type 2 diabetes is in the mid-forties, $6,600 a year is not going to amount to $400,000 for a lifetime unless the average person with T2D lives to be over a hundred.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm all for people having healthier and more earth-friendly eating habits (not to mention transportation, etc.), and I think if we did so average weights might go down, but I think it's pretty unscientific to make obesity the one-word summing-up of what crummy eating habits may lead to. The reality's far more complicated.
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