The Rise of NCDs in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Thomas R. Frieden, director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, discusses the challenges facing low- and middle-income countries in combating non communicable diseases.

This session is part one of the two session meeting, Non Communicable Diseases and the New Global Health.

SPEAKER:
Thomas R. Frieden
PRESIDER:
Jo Ivey Boufford

http://www.cfr.org/global-health/rise...

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[zutroy1]

The US electorate will always vote in whichever politican will give them more free stuff, particularly when you are promising treatment for the obese who have inflicted disease on themselves

Rather than communicate that over 65% of medical cost in the US are from self-inflicted disease as a result of poor health, US politicians try to tearjerk you for your poor obese grandma and implement more policies which directly encourage obesity and incentivize the cure of obesity with zero reward for prev

[zutroy1]

It's really disingenuous to pretend that nobody knows where to start for the obesity epidemic in the US.

Choosing to ignore all non-statist solutions does not invalidate them. If you subsidize obesity and promise people treatment for this massive burden of self-inflicted disease, you are encouraging that behaviour and denial won't change reality.

If you tell all Americans they cannot be denied for pre-existing conditions, they will eat themselves into DiabetesII then sign up.

INCENTIVIZATION

[zutroy1]

While I can see that Mr Frieden's motives for government expansion are quite honest and good, I have to say that thinking the government can be helpful in implementing this kind of policy is totally fantastical and ignores history.

When the gov't begins a small role in health, it quickly expands out of control and turns in to the unfunded horrendous kind of treatment available in the US. They encourage bad health by incentivizing cure and not prevention and they defer the costs to future gens.