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Debating the Issues: Ramaswamy Won The Debate About Health Care No One Else Is Willing To Tackle
The Federalist ^ | 12/07/2023 | Tristan Justice

Posted on 12/07/2023 6:48:41 PM PST by SeekAndFind

A presidential candidate is finally talking about exercise in the context of reforming the broken American “health” care system.

At the Republican debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy called on the health insurance industry to prioritize preventative medicine over high-dollar procedures that are only sought after disease has already taken hold.

“They’ll pay for anything like feeding tubes, doctors to be pill pushers,” Ramaswamy said, but not for “the procedures that can actually make these patients better.”

“Here’s the answer,” Ramaswamy added. “We need to start having diverse insurance options in a competitive marketplace that cover actual health, preventative medicine, diet, exercise, lifestyle, and otherwise.”

“We don’t have a health care system in this country. We have a sick care system,” Ramaswamy explained.

He’s right. If Americans are at all curious why health care has remained a huge issue in each recent presidential election, look no further than our existing level of baseline health. U.S. life expectancy has essentially flatlined as 6 in 10 American adults suffer from at least one chronic disease. Four in 10 suffer from two, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nearly 42 percent of American adults, meanwhile, are categorically obese and can expect their lifetime health expenditures to cost about double those of non-obese Americans.

Dr. Peter Attia wrote about the broken nature of our current health care system in his book, Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity, in March.

Health insurance companies won’t pay a doctor very much to tell a patient to change the way he eats, or to monitor the blood glucose levels in order to prevent him from developing type 2 diabetes. Yet insurance will pay for this same patient’s (very expensive) insulin after he has been diagnosed. Similarly, there’s no billing code for putting a patient on a comprehensive exercise program designed to maintain her muscle mass and sense of balance while building her resistance to injury. But if she falls and breaks her hip, then her surgery and physical therapy will be covered.

The U.S. spends roughly $3.6 trillion on health care every year but just 3 percent or less of that spending is targeted at prevention. U.S. health care spending, meanwhile, reached more than 18 percent of GDP in 2021, up from 5 percent in 1960.

If the focus on American health care started with healthspan instead of lifespan, Americans might not just live longer, Americans would live better for longer. Instead, the post-1960 dietary guidelines endorsed by the American Heart Association (AHA) led Americans down the path of the low-fat diet craze broadly detrimental to human health. Americans don’t just need to prioritize diet and exercise; they need to prioritize the right diet and exercise programs for their individual needs.



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bloggers; debate; gop; healthcare; obamacare; ramaswamydingdong; vivek; wasteofair
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1 posted on 12/07/2023 6:48:41 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Make insurance actually insurance again. Commie funds transfers don’t work.


2 posted on 12/07/2023 6:53:28 PM PST by kvanbrunt2
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To: SeekAndFind

This is arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

The last six months of life suck up most of the health care budget.

It does not matter whether those last six months are 60 to 60 and one half or 102 to 102 and a half.


3 posted on 12/07/2023 6:55:12 PM PST by cgbg ("Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training." Anna Freud.)
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To: SeekAndFind

A lot of this is personal responsibility & discipline ... there’s lots of health info out there already

Start with the simple things, like stopping smoking and cut down on sugar (and sugar products like CoffeeMate)

Turn off the TV and walk twice a day, every day

Sunshine and fresh air help too!!


4 posted on 12/07/2023 6:57:41 PM PST by canuck_conservative (NATO - keeping Europe free of Russian invaders for 74 years - you're welcome!)
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To: kvanbrunt2

It needs to be deregulated.. allow for national pools vs each State


5 posted on 12/07/2023 6:58:59 PM PST by Article10 (Roger That)
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To: SeekAndFind
Health insurance companies won’t pay a doctor very much to tell a patient to change the way he eats, or to monitor the blood glucose levels in order to prevent him from developing type 2 diabetes. Yet insurance will pay for this same patient’s (very expensive) insulin after he has been diagnosed. Similarly, there’s no billing code for putting a patient on a comprehensive exercise program designed to maintain her muscle mass and sense of balance while building her resistance to injury. But if she falls and breaks her hip, then her surgery and physical therapy will be covered.

Much of that is called 'taking personal RESPONSIBILITY...a concept alien to Nanny Statists.

6 posted on 12/07/2023 6:59:12 PM PST by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: SeekAndFind

I’m so tired of hearing this guy saying “I’m the Only one”....and or trying to be a Trump Clone so much his nose is getting brown.


7 posted on 12/07/2023 7:01:03 PM PST by caww (O death, when you seized my Lord, you lost your grip on me......)
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To: SeekAndFind

Take the ‘e” off of the GOPe, win the house and senate in 2024. Repeal Obamacare and start there. r-r-r-r-i-g-h-t /s


8 posted on 12/07/2023 7:05:19 PM PST by quantim (Victory is not relative, it is absolute. )
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To: SeekAndFind

Ramaswamy is a fraud, the fact he’s even on that stage shows just what a pathetically incompetent mess and out of touch the GOPe is.

This guy is a fraud from top to bottom, not a single thing about him is genuine... just an abject con man that some folks are falling for.

This guys is just garbage, utter and total garbage.


9 posted on 12/07/2023 7:10:13 PM PST by HamiltonJay
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To: SeekAndFind

well, healthcare is simple, but the uniparty won’t do anything about it. it starts with a straight repeal of obamacare, get rid of the gov’t run Big Health alphabet, and goes on from there to put all the power back in the hands of individual patients and doctors.

but as an aside, i actually saw a bit of the rerun and was impressed with a couple of truths he spoke.

one was that the election was *stolen* cybernetically (that he’s come around on that from his book is a good thing), that is he realizes that elections are stolen by the dems with the necessary aid of election machines and independent vendors.

the second was that he called Nikki corrupt to her face, he even held up a notepad. i mean DeSantis was fine, fact based, socially conservative—statesman like and balanced, and i support him, but honestly, i think Ramaswamy ‘won’ on unvarnished truth telling alone.


10 posted on 12/07/2023 7:30:56 PM PST by dadfly
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To: SeekAndFind
The first thing we have to do is yo have the government get out of the business of making dietary recommendations. Because being government, they will always be corrupted by profit-seeking corporations.

A Fatally Flawed Food Guide

Back in the early ‘80s, I was the leader of a group of top-level nutritionists with the USDA who developed the eating guide that became known as the Food Guide Pyramid.

Carefully reviewing the research on nutrient recommendations, disease prevention, documented dietary shortfalls and major health problems of the population, we submitted the final version of our new Food Guide to the Secretary of Agriculture.

When our version of the Food Guide came back to us revised, we were shocked to find that it was vastly different from the one we had developed. As I later discovered, the wholesale changes made to the guide by the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture were calculated to win the acceptance of the food industry. For instance, the Ag Secretary’s office altered wording to emphasize processed foods over fresh and whole foods, to downplay lean meats and low-fat dairy choices because the meat and milk lobbies believed it’d hurt sales of full-fat products; it also hugely increased the servings of wheat and other grains to make the wheat growers happy. The meat lobby got the final word on the color of the saturated fat/cholesterol guideline which was changed from red to purple because meat producers worried that using red to signify “bad” fat would be linked to red meat in consumers’ minds.

Where we, the USDA nutritionists, called for a base of 5-9 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, it was replaced with a paltry 2-3 servings (changed to 5-7 servings a couple of years later because an anti-cancer campaign by another government agency, the National Cancer Institute, forced the USDA to adopt the higher standard). Our recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads and cereals was changed to a whopping 6-11 servings forming the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. Moreover, my nutritionist group had placed baked goods made with white flour — including crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods laden with sugars and fats — at the peak of the pyramid, recommending that they be eaten sparingly. To our alarm, in the “revised” Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid’s base. And, in yet one more assault on dietary logic, changes were made to the wording of the dietary guidelines from “eat less” to “avoid too much,” giving a nod to the processed-food industry interests by not limiting highly profitable “fun foods” (junk foods by any other name) that might affect the bottom line of food companies.


11 posted on 12/07/2023 7:36:12 PM PST by jdege
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To: SeekAndFind

They can call it the High Fructose Corn Syrup Healthcare Act.


12 posted on 12/07/2023 7:37:08 PM PST by glorgau
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To: caww

Ramaswamy is ray of sunshine in fog of deep state. And has IQ about double that of all other candidates.


13 posted on 12/07/2023 7:53:32 PM PST by entropy12 (Career politicians like Desantis build wealth. Trump sacrificed hit wealth to serve people. GO TRUMP)
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To: HamiltonJay

You are a bigger fraud on FR. You have ZERO EVIDSENCE about Ramaswamy being a fraud, but you appear on every Ramaswamy thread posting the same vomit.


14 posted on 12/07/2023 7:55:14 PM PST by entropy12 (Career politicians like Desantis build wealth. Trump sacrificed hit wealth to serve people. GO TRUMP)
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To: entropy12

Bull. Ramaswamy is an abject fraud.

Buy a failed drug.

Have your mom manipulate the 3rd study done on the drug that failed, to make it look like it worked.

Do the dog and pony show citing your manipulation of the failed study as proof it works… get as many fools to give you cash on your lies… pump and dump your stock as much as you can before you announce that the actual study you did which once again showed it failed is made public.

The man is a FRAUD from top to bottom.. nothing that comes out of his mouth is backed up by any of his actions.

He’s backed companies that wanted the federal government to have complete access to your medical records to track covid

Etc etc etc

He’s a fraud, top to bottom..

Period.


15 posted on 12/07/2023 8:22:44 PM PST by HamiltonJay
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To: entropy12

Not the least bit interested in ever seeing a practicing Hinduist as President of the USA - nor a Muslim - nor a Buddist etc.etc. ...... we are still a Christian Nation.


16 posted on 12/07/2023 8:32:46 PM PST by caww (O death, when you seized my Lord, you lost your grip on me......)
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To: SeekAndFind

The young folks love this guy. He’s their Ron Paul.


17 posted on 12/07/2023 8:34:01 PM PST by TornadoAlley3 ( I'm Proud To Be An Okie From Muskogee)
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To: caww

I wouldn’t want him as VP or President, but a high up advisor would be fine with me.


18 posted on 12/07/2023 8:57:11 PM PST by Flaming Conservative ((Pray without ceasing))
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To: HamiltonJay

“This guy is a fraud from top to bottom, not a single thing about him is genuine... just an abject con man that some folks are falling for.”

The same was said of Trump in 2015


19 posted on 12/07/2023 9:43:19 PM PST by Fai Mao ( Starve the Beast and steal its food)
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To: Flaming Conservative
Looks like he would make a great surgeon general or head of USDA or health and human services.

I have been lazy when it comes to exercise, diabetic and fat.

3 weeks ago my doc prescribed medications that cost over $1500 a month.

While I get my meds almost free with a very low copay, there is no way I'm going to take anything costing that much.

This has finally motivated me to exercise.

A few minutes ago I did 52 pushups.

A also jog on a trampoline and work out with weights, kettlebells and isometrics at least every other day.

Getting better sleep.

Am starting to feel a little better already.

20 posted on 12/07/2023 10:36:59 PM PST by Mogger
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