the good news: chronic disease is preventable and reversibleReal Prevention Is the Only Answer
Our present-day disease care model is doomed to failure. As
former U.S. President Bill Clinton told Sanjay Gupta, MD, during
his March 2009 interview on Larry King Live, no matter what
type of plan we put in place to cover everyone with insurance or
reduce inefficiencies in the system itself, without incorporating
disease prevention into our lifestyles, we will fail at real healthcare
reform. We will fail because the number of people with chronic
disease will keep growing and any new healthcare package will
simply cover more unhealthy people with chronic diseases, not
create fewer of them. The percentage of our gross national prod-
uct (GNP) spent on healthcare will continue to rise (presently 16.5
percent—highest in the world) to 18 or 19 percent of our GNP,
and we will not be able to afford this disease-oriented healthcare
system.^55
I heard President Obama, in a television statement, say es-
sentially the same thing. If we don’t get healthcare expenses un-
der control, not just by being more efficient but by prevention, in
the next decade or two, healthcare expenditures could go to 20
percent of our GNP, or one-fifth of what our nation produces. If
you read President Obama’s Fiscal 2010 Budget: Transforming and
Modernizing America’s Health Care System from the Office of Bud-
get and Management, it emphasizes prevention, which is good,
but I think this following statement is grossly understated: “Over
a third of all illness is the result of poor diet, lack of exercise, and
smoking. Indeed, obesity alone leads to many expensive, chronic
conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes,
and even cancer.”^56
According to our own Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion (CDC), 70 percent of U.S. deaths come from chronic disease.
These highly preventable chronic diseases account for 75 percent
of our healthcare expenditures. The CDC states that the major risk
factors for these chronic diseases are lack of physical activity, poor
nutrition, tobacco use, and excessive alcohol consumption.^57
The WHO states that chronic diseases are responsible for 60 per-
cent of all deaths worldwide, and if the major risk factors for chronic