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Rather Pay $2T per Year or $500B One-Time?

The answer to this question should be a no-brainer:

Is it better to pay trillions of dollars annually in preventable chronic health costs, or to pay a cumulative $500-600 billion or so one-time to cover all student college loan defaults or Great Recession mortgage losses?

Hmmm.  And what's the connection?

We got the massive Dodd-Frank Reform in 2010 to prevent future financial catastrophes, and hopefully Great Recession 2.0--after 1.0 cost private lenders $535B, plus much collateral damage to families & the economy. 

We then got Obama-era regulations, subsequently reversed under Trump, to help prevent student loan defaults.  Now Biden has proposed eliminating all public college/university, historically black college and undergraduate student debt.  This would make a big dent in about $585B in expected student loan defaults. 

So where are the massive federal proposals to head off chronic diseases before they start?  

With total US health spending at about $4T/year, that implies at least $2T/year in preventable annual chronic condition expenditures.  Even if we only reduced those by 25%, we would save $500B/year each year--plenty enough to address many of our non-health problems.  

So the big unanswered question remains:  When are we going to seriously invest in the much bigger issues of preventing inactivity and unhealthy nutrition?

How about both/and: Let's prevent future housing, student loan AND chronic health disasters.  








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