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by adewinter 1539 days ago
You're saying that it's a guarantee that every single healthcare system (in the world?) will break down because of _sugar consumption_? Seriously?
6 comments

If sugar consumption is the leading factor in obesity, and if obesity is the leading factor in added pressure to the health care system, then... it's definitely a big preventable factor, I'd say.

But it's not absolutes. Anyway yeah, some lifestyle choices need to be addressed to reduce pressure on the health care system. Like how for two years now we've had certain measures in place like social distancing and facial masks, not to eradicate the virus (that would require extended full stay-at-home mandate lockdowns) but to keep pressure on the health care system manageable.

It is very close to the truth unfortunately. Maybe it won't break down but the vast majority of health care spending is there to undo the effects of a bad diet more than anything else.
That plus the inverted population pyramid. It's certainly plausible
Diabetes is really rough on the organs. Especially once the kidneys go, you need dialysis 3 times per week and the treatment takes hours. If a substantial fraction of the population needs that treatment, it's going to be rough. Plus the eye surgeries for glaucoma, and other kinds of organ failure.
> Especially once the kidneys go, you need dialysis 3 times per week and the treatment takes hours.

My grandpa went through this in 2020. He was a tough navy guy, and even he said "This is a half-assed way to live", stopped the dialysis, and passed away a few weeks later. Once you're on dialysis, there's not much of a chance of going back to a life without it.

can't decide if it's good or bad then that we somehow have universal care... but only for kidneys, lol https://www.npr.org/transcripts/131167638
Oh wow, thanks for the link. I had no idea that we covered kidney disease that way.
Yeah if birth rates stay low ( which they have now for a few decades esp in Western countries but true elsewhere), you’ll need either large scale immigration or lots of cash to service the social care system, which now has to service the growing number of the geriatric and chronically il
Almost every health care system is based on shared payment. Either insurance or socialized medicine, it's similar with a varying amount of pooling. If almost everybody is obese, us few healthy people may end up stuck paying for the fatties. And eventually, there will be too many fatties, they will vote that they can't be pooled separately so we have to pay even more, and there will at some point be too few of us.

IInsurance for me should be very low. I am in great shape by anybody's measure. But all the drunks, junkies, fatties, make my payments so high I've debated dropping medical insurance.