Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that's a costly investment in your health. But how much you want to invest is going to depend on how much longer you expect to live in the future, even if you don't make those investments.
Health messages are simply overwhelmed, in volume and in effectiveness, by junk-food ads that often deploy celebrities or cartoon characters to great effect. We may know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for us, but the preponderance of the signals we get - and especially the signals children get - push us in the direction of junk food.
These are the same people who believe, in some cases, the federal government should not play any role in providing health care to our people or protecting the environment.
We should allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines. That will create a true 50-state national marketplace which will drive down the cost of low-cost, catastrophic health insurance.
I've been to enough other countries in the world to know what happens when you have socialized single-payer health care. It works. People don't get sick as much. They don't lose their life savings with a catastrophic illness like cancer or AIDS.
There's this notion out there - and it's a categorically false notion - that the only business model in the service industry is the minimum-wage business model. I say phooey to that. You go to a Costco store, and you see people there who've been working there for years and years. They're making $15, $20 an hour, plus health benefits.
When cattle ranchers clear rain forests to raise beef to sell to fast-food chains that make hamburgers to sell to Americans, who have the highest rate of heart disease in the world (and spend the most money per GNP on health care), we can say easily that business is no longer developing the world. We have become its predator.
Much of what I do in my job is think about whether relationships we see in data are causal, as opposed to just reflecting correlations. It's exactly these issues which come up in evaluating studies in public health.
Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, perhaps ever. Global temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate, causing drought and forest fires and impacting human health.
Some experts look at global warming, increased world temperature, as the critical tipping point that is causing a crash in coral reef health around the world. And there's no question that it is a factor, but it's preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.
I'm a clown, which could be a public health role. I'm really interested in moving our society away from a society needing Xanax and Prozac, and that is really feeling depressed, to one that is celebrating, and so I find just walking around in colorful clothes, people smile.
I love the idea that horror and fear is a celebration of health and life.
Pizza certainly has its place in school meals, but equating it with broccoli, carrots and celery seriously undermines this nation's efforts to support children's health and their ability to learn because of better school nutrition.
Look, if you have somebody who doesn't have health insurance, who doesn't have a doctor or dentist, and in order to deal with their cold or flu or dental problem, they go to an emergency room - in general, that visit will cost ten times more than walking into a community health center.
There is an urgent need for the Central government to take the lead in ensuring health and nutrition service delivery.
We want market-based, consumer-based reforms in health care. We want to give people incentives to make wise choices in a marketplace, not centralized choices and have government mandates and takeovers.
I don't know of a Democrat - whether they're a conservative, a centrist or a liberal Democrat - that doesn't think that it's important to have quality jobs that pay decent wages so that families can support themselves, so that they can have the dignity of being able to afford health care, put money aside for pension, buy a home.
I don't think you can measure wealth in dollars and cents. I really don't believe that at all because there are some things that money cannot buy. One of them is health. And the other is security in your relationships and friends.
After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.
Championing quality improvement and value in the health care system is a passion of mine, and I'm able to bring about change through private equity activities.
