Food Industry Needs Reform Too

Michael Pollan wrote an inciteful op/ed piece in today's New York Times that makes the important connection of healthcare reform and food industry reform. There's no disputing that our misguided agricultural policies have contributed significantly to our nation's obesity crisis. Pollan postures that if the health insurance industry was forced to apply an equal coverage model, it will behoove them to help reform food policy. Over the course of their lifetime, a diabetic costs an insurance company about $400,000.00. no small change. Pollan goes on to say " No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet."

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