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National insecurity: self-inflicted threats from our health (rant #2)

The national security threat of an unhealthy population extends far beyond difficulties in enlisting fit military personnel.

The military budget makes up about 20% of the federal budget. In contrast, health costs are now almost 50% of federal spending, many times higher than in the past.  Continued increases in government spending on health care pose a growing threat to military budgets.  

Military spending has been at roughly 3-4% of GDP for the last 30 years.  In contrast, total US health costs over that same period have increased from 12% to 18% of US GDP.  

Employers have passed an increasing % of health costs on to employees, resulting in higher employee premiums & out-of-pocket spending.  Average health costs per person have almost doubled over the last 30+ years. 

(Bad) health is absorbing a growing share of family spending, and reducing money available for anything else.  We are all paying for each others' health care, with the decreasing % of healthy individuals unsustainably subsidizing the growing % of the unhealthy.  No wonder everyone is at each other's throats over health costs!

Our health costs, both as a % of GDP & per capita, exceed other major countries by 50-100%+.  A lot of that is due to much higher US rates of chronic disease.  In an increasingly competitive global economy, we cannot afford to have a much more unhealthy & unproductive workforce & higher labor costs.  

We could keep paying more for both health care & national defense.  We can refuse to make the traditional "guns vs. butter" tradeoff.  We have started increasing our national debt to historically unheard-of levels in peacetime.  In other words, by not confronting the issue & not paying for our own health & military costs, we pass them on to our children & grandchildren.  

So our inadequate public health policies & investments and resulting bad health are putting major pressure on government, business & family budgets--and on future generations.  As the fiscal screws tighten, we will have to make some stomach-churning triage choices between national defense, health care & everything else. Our nation will become increasingly insecure. 

No one would choose to go there--yet that is where we are headed.




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