Preach it!

Michael Pollen, Big Food vs. Big Insurance, in the NYTimes:

To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.

There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

As things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. There’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

Yes, yes, and yes.

The third snippet is a bit of a sore point for me right now.  I have been looking for a job as a health educator for two-and-a-half years.  Apparently I should have stuck with the medical school plan and gone into amputation surgery (is that actually a surgical specialty, or did I just make it up?).

I’ve always had mixed feelings about John Mayer’s song, “Waiting on the World to Change.”  I like the melody, but the lyrics raise some questions:  Why are you waiting?  What are you waiting for?  Why don’t you go out and change it now?

I know what I want to do, but the jobs just are not out there, in part due to the reasons Michael Pollen mentions.  Our health care system does not fund prevention.  So maybe I am waiting on the world to change.