It may have occurred to him, but if so, he’s not going to come out and say it, since he still pushes the low-fat diet.

That’s been my beef with Ornish’s claims all along. He has his patients quit smoking, start exercising, undergo stress management … oh, and by the way, adopt a low-fat diet. Then when their rate of heart disease drops, he credits the diet. If I took a bunch of smoking, stressed-out couch potatoes and got them to meditate, relax, exercise, give up smoking and start chewing tobacco, their rate of heart disease would also drop — but that doesn’t mean chewing tobacco cures heart disease.

There are plenty of programs that don’t get renewed and increased every year — just not the ones that benefit politically powerful old people.

I don’t edit anyone’s posts, other than to add my comments. I do that because if I reply in a separate comment, it may be separated from the original by 10 other comments, which makes it difficult to people to connect the comments and replies.

Are you trying to suggest that this will be the one entitlement program that will stay within budget and be cancelled when it turns out to be more expensive than anticipated? Name one entitlement program that’s ever been cancelled. We’ve still got farm-support programs in place that were intended to help farmers through the Depression.

If you know your history, you know that Medicare was increased by Congress just about every election till 1980. You can’t say the prognosticators were off for not predicting their program would be increased by future Congresses. That would be similar to saying the F-15 had a 100% cost overrun because they originally planned to buy 50 for $100 million and ended up buying 100 for $200 million.

How would Congress have avoided increasing Medicare? By denying newly-developed drugs and medical procedures to senior citizens? By refusing to adjust rates paid to doctors to account for inflation? They always vastly underestimate the cost of these programs, and they’ll do it again. The prescription-drug program was budgeted at $400 billion; a year later the projection went to $1.2 trillion.

Whatever the reason for the increases, they always happen. Anyone who trusts a congressional budget projection for a new entitlement program is dreaming.

I have serious doubts about the ability of “preventive care” to reduce health care costs. Studies have shown this is a myth, and Mike Eades had a great post on the topic a while ago. If by “prevention,” people mean exercise, smoking cessation, avoiding junk food, etc. this will probably cost society more in the long run because we all have to die of something, and the longer people live, the more resources they consume (esp. Social Security and Medicare). If “prevention” means testing everyone for every possible dreadful disease they might get, and then medicating the hell out of anyone who is “at risk” for any of these diseases, then medicating them more because of the side effects of the original meds, it doesn’t take a genius to see how this could get very expensive.

Good point. The excuse to tax the bejesus out of smokers (I’m not one, by the way) is that they’re more likely to develop a disease and draw on Medicare. But they also die younger and stop collecting Social Security.

And though I hate lobbies as a general rule, I have to wonder along with Michelle… it sounds like a beef lobby is what we need. If we have to have silly subsidizing at all, I’d rather be able to get some grass fed beef for cheaper as opposed to carbonated corn water.

The current debate over health care costs is like arguing over who’s going to pay for all the smoke-jumpers and firefighters, even as the government continues tossing flares into the forest. We could slash our medical costs with two simple actions: announce that the food pyramid is nonsense and grains aren’t good human food, then end all grain subsidies.

Good point. After doing some reading and listening to some vitamin-D researchers on Jimmy Moore’s show, I started supplementing with vitamin D.

I’ve wondered that myself. I can only guess that the grain producers are much more numerous and much more powerful. And of course, the USDA wants to promote grains.

May I suggest you read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. She was a vegetarian for 20 years for moral, political and health reasons. So she deeply understand what drives people to be vegetarian and discusses all of these aspects. She is writing the book to make clear all the facts that she was never told. They are complex and interdependant.

As far as not wanting to kill anything, the reality is that all life depends on death. It is a circle. There can be no life without the death of something. Even your pastured dairy products require death. the cow must give birth each year to keep producing milk. The males will become meat , someone will eat them. Maybe not you, but someone.

Please read this book and then decide what makes the most sense. With the complete removal of most of us from the actual production of food, it is easy to think there are clear cut answers to these challenging questions. It a complex issue that deserves open minded inquiry.

Also, if you have the choice, if ethical concerns are your driver and you are vegetarian as opposed to vegan, try to get pasture fed dairy products. Then they are raised in a field, not a shed. Theres biochemical concerns I won’t go into but pastoral dairy is better all around.