The Financial Link Between Diet and Disease
by Hesh Goldstein

If you have ever listened to me on the radio, you know that I emphasize the real connection between what we eat and why we get ill. Hopefully, you are aware of the fact that saturated fat ingestion brings about 95% of our degenerative diseases. And, as you know, saturated fat is found in everything that walks, runs, flies, crawls, or swims. To drive this point home, allow me to present to you the dollars behind the disease as per a study done by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. I will use the format of presenting the illness, followed by the annual cost, and then the number of people affected. This report was for the year 1997. I shudder to think of the figures now.

• Heart disease: $58 billion, 17 million people.
• Cancer: $46 billion, 9 million people.
• Trauma: $44 billion, 44 million people.
• Mental disorders: $30 billion, 20 million people.
• Lung disorders (including asthma): $29 billion, 41 million people.
• Diabetes: $20 billion, 10 million people.
• Hypertension: $18 billion, 27 million people.
• Cerebrovascular disease: $16 billion, 2 million people.
• Osteoarthritis: $16 billion, 16 million people.
• Pneumonia: $16, billion, 4 million people.
• Back problems: $13 billion, 13 million people.
• Kidney disease: $10 billion, 2 million people.
• Endocrine disorders: $10 billion, 18 million people.
• Skin disorders: $9 billion, 20 million people.
• Infectious diseases: $6 billion, 16 million people.

Private insurance covered at least 35% of the expenses for the top five conditions, including more than 50% of the costs associated with cancer. Medicare covered nearly 45 % of heart disease expenses with between 20%-25% of the costs associated with cancer and trauma, 16% of the expense for mental disorders, and 30% of the bill for pulmonary conditions. Out-of pocket expenses were highest for hypertension at 30% (which also had the largest proportion of costs in prescription drug expenses), while the cheapest condition for out-of-pocket payers was pneumonia at 4.1%

Anyway you slice it, the pharmaceutical/ medical/ insurance complex took in $325 billion from 259 million people, or $1.255 billion per person largely due to the addiction to flesh and blood.

Most definitely, "you are what you eat"!

Aloha!

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