Preventative interventions can; preventing obesity falls under the purview of healthcare departments like the NHS.
But neither private insurance nor hospitals have any incentive to operate preventatively because insurance can just increase premiums and everybody happily makes more money... Some might observe how that also increases the GDP...
I honestly don't understand this statement. What else besides healthcare could fix that? Are you arguing that Mississippi obesity is due to genetics and cannot be changed?
The only other thing I can think of that would affect state wide obesity is food security and quality. Proper healthcare would be my first pick for fixing obesity.
The USA doesn't do much of that though. It prefers medical care.
(E.g., adding a dose-dependent sin tax on food-like substances with added sugar, subsidizing real food for those on SNAP. Unpopular because who doesn't want their simple carbs?)
They don't want to, any more than someone who steps into traffic carelessly wants to have a broken hip (albeit on a different time scale). That's a stunningly paternalistic view.
I dont think the people in mississippi who are fat want to have diets that are comparable to french ones. I also think shame and peer pressure play a large role in keeping people from getting fat and personally find that a terrible way to run a society. Of course, all else equal, almost no one wants to be fat, but all else is not equal.
I don't think it's a matter of better or worse quality, the Healthcare being expensive and for profit in Mississippi leads to people just not going to the doctor at all
What matters is the outcomes. If nobody is able to use a world-class healthcare system (for whatever reason, could be affordability as in the US or availability as in the UK), then as a whole it's as good as no healthcare.
For instance, if you cut preventive healthcare for younger parts of the population that will take longer to manifest.
I wish there were more modeling tools available to run what-if simulations on public data.