Healthcare Plan

[John2598]

Why don't we (Republicans) promote "healthy living" or "healthy lifestyles" as a way to reduce healthcare costs. Would that be anti-business?

[boysmom4]

Why would that be considered "anti-business"?

My employer encourages healthy living and healthy lifestyles and offers a discount off your health insurance co-payment if you participate in programs that support such things.

[John2598]

That's good! I'm glad to hear it but I think it's usually done by a limited number of corporations who employ large numbers of people. I just wish we could expand on that idea to cover a lot more people. And I think it would be good to include nutrition education and not just exercise and quitting smoking.

What about (some) school kids who know very little about nutrition? Here in Florida they passed a law to require PE in the schools. That was a nice first step to try to deal with the ever growing numbers of overweight and obese kids. But that alone isn't going to help, in my opinion, if kids don't have some basic knowledge of nutrition (and the consequences of poor nutrition).

Unfortunately, politics has become firmly entrenched in the area of health and nutrition. There's even a book on this that I read several years ago titled, "Food Politics".

You ask why it would be anti-business: Well, if you try to give information to kids, for example, about limiting or avoiding certain high fat, high sugar, high calorie foods and beverages, it's bound to have some negative effect on the profits of those food companies that produce those kinds of food items.

So even though nutrition education wouldn't be intentionally anti-business, it's likely to be seen that way by many segments of the food industry.

That being the case, how do we go about promoting healthy lifestyles? How would we go about reaching enough people to make a difference? Good or bad eating habits begin in the early years like first, second, third grade and beyond. So I happen to think that teaching nutrition in school would be a big help. What do you think?

And questions or comments are welcome.

[MrShotShot]

It's not anti-business - while you may be encouraging people to stay away from fast food and unhealthy food, you're encouraging to buy food from healthier alternatives.

You gotta eat.