Oct. 22, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:58
3866 America's Obesity Epidemic What They Don't Tell You!
The obesity epidemic in the United States of America is as undiscussed as it is deadly and expensive. Stefan Molyneux breaks down some aspects of the rise in obesity that many simply won't talk about, including: the impact of immigration, intelligence, the destruction of free market incentives and the generational damage done through Obamacare. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Now, 40% of American adults are obese and 20% of American teenagers are obese.
Now, the obesity epidemic is fueled by a number of things.
There's, of course, lobbying of the government to keep the price of sugar high, which then contributes to the subsidization of things like high fructose corn syrup, which is nasty stuff as a whole.
There is, of course, massive immigration of third worlders, which, of course, contributes to Obesity.
Because obesity is inversely correlated to IQ. The smarter you are, the less likely you are to be obese.
And so if you're importing low IQ populations into your country, then you're going to end up with obesity over time.
They may not be obese when they arrive, but they sure as heck...
We'll be obese after a while and I think Mexico has the highest rates of diabetes in the world and so that is a significant reality.
Now another thing that's not really talked about with regards to the obesity epidemic and its staggering multi-hundreds of billions of dollars cost on the healthcare system in America and of course other countries.
is the Affordable Care Act.
Obamacare has contributed to this to some degree as well.
So, listen, if you're smart, one of the definitions of being intelligent, of having a high IQ, is to really understand the future implications of current decisions.
And the smarter you are, the longer you can look down the tunnel of time And say, what are the consequences in the future of my decisions now?
It's why smoking and obesity and some kinds of addictions and dangerous behavior and so on are inversely correlated with IQ. The smarter you are, the more likely you are to be healthy, to have a good weight, to live longer, to not smoke, to not drink to excess and so on.
Lots of exceptions, but that's the general trend.
Now, When the ACA came in, like before Obamacare came in, you got feedback on your health habits on a real-time basis.
So you would apply for insurance and the insurance company would ask you a whole bunch of questions.
You know, like how tall are you?
How heavy are you? What are your exercise habits?
Do you smoke? Do you have dangerous lifestyle habits and so on?
And all of these questions would result in a premium.
In other words, you got a real-time estimate of how expensive your future healthcare costs were going to be.
Future healthcare costs are always expensive at the end of life.
On average, half of your healthcare expenses for your entire life are consumed in the last six months of your life.
It's just nobody knows exactly when that six months is until hindsight, so it's just natural cost.
So a lot of healthcare expenses are related to how far away is this big cluster of healthcare expenses at the end of your life.
If you're living healthily, it's more likely to be further down the road, which means you can pay more premiums, which means that your premiums can be lower.
If you're making decisions that are going to bring that end-of-life cost closer, or if you're making decisions that are going to end up with sort of chronic, medicatable conditions, you know, like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and so on, then that's going to raise your costs sooner.
So, before ACA, before Obamacare, the insurance companies would ask you, and then every year, they would ask you again.
Sometimes, right? I mean, so they'd say, okay, well, oh, you've gained 20 pounds.
Well, that's going to have to be reflected in your premium.
So, rather than relying on mere abstract and conceptual intelligence to inform daily decisions on health choices...
Which doesn't always work.
What happens is people would say, or the insurance company would say, well your premiums are going up because your cholesterol is this, your blood pressure is this, your weight is this.
And that used to give people pretty good feedback on their current health choices.
You got a dollar, like an actuarialized mathematical dollar estimate of the future cost of your current health.
Health decisions without having to pay a penny for it.
All of this analysis is done to you for free.
Now, after Obamacare came in, what happened?
Well, remember, the Democrats want to be able to keep third-worlders in America because third-worlders generally vote for bigger government, socialized stuff.
And one of the costs of healthcare was a deterrent to people coming to America.
So the ACA was, I think, in part designed to deal with that.
So after ACA, there are two questions in general that the employers are allowed to ask you.
Number one is, do you smoke?
That's it. And number two is, how old are you?
And that's it. Now, you're not even allowed to ask, are you a man or a woman?
Because women consume healthcare resources at a higher rate than men.
And of course, this massive subsidy of those who use healthcare the most from those who use healthcare the least was basically a semi-socialized medicine, right?
Which is why they had to force you to buy healthcare insurance because you had to pay for all of these people who had We've made bad decisions and 70% on average of negative health care issues, like health care issues, diseases and so on, dysfunctions, are lifestyle related, the result of choices that you make, which is good news and bad news, right?
It's good news in that things are controllable and it's bad news for people who've made those particular lifestyle choices that result in poor health.
So what happens is, when people don't get that feedback on a real-time, actuarialized basis, on the future costs of their current healthcare choices, when a guy who's, you know, 25, who's got a body mass index of 19, who, you know, low body fat, exercises ferociously or whatever...
He pays the same as somebody who's 250 pounds and, you know, guzzling diet soda and eating hot dogs and so on.
If they end up having to pay the same, of course that's entirely unfair, but it is to the immediate advantage of the overweight person, of the unhealthy person, to get His healthcare premiums subsidized by the healthy person in the short run, of course.
But of course, if they were able to think effectively and change behavior for the long term, then they wouldn't be 250 pounds.
They would have made better choices in the past.
You know, everybody who starts gaining weight, like you notice it.
I was sort of wondering about this.
Let me know in the comments below. Like, if you start gaining weight, don't you kind of notice you can't fit into your pants anymore?
You know, your belt is running out of holes and so on.
I mean, it just seems, wouldn't you kind of notice and adjust your behavior?
I mean, if you go from, you know, 175 to 275, I mean, don't you have to keep going shopping for new clothes?
I mean, aren't you? Like, it just seems kind of odd.
Like, it's not like you don't notice, but I guess some people really don't.
And so here's the great tragedy.
The great tragedy is this.
That, to use an analogy from driving, and this is more than an analogy, this is fairly well established, right?
So, when people wear seatbelts, when seatbelts are put in cars and they are mandated, you have to wear them by law, you'd think, okay, well, people are wearing seatbelts, so...
They're going to be safer. That's not actually what happens.
What happens is when people wear seat belts they feel safer so they drive more dangerously and you end up really not reducing fatalities at all.
Tragically, tragically what happens is when you mandate seat belts and people drive more dangerously Traffic fatalities for people inside cars don't go down, but fatalities for people outside the cars, you know, bicyclists and pedestrians and so on, and motorcyclists, they go up. And this kind of give people security, they will change their behavior.
is one of the fundamental problems of subsidizing health care.
If people have the perception that future health care costs will be taken care of by someone else, to whatever degree, then they will end up choosing more dangerous health choices in the here and now.
I mean, if you gain weight and your insurance premiums go up, to accurately reflect the fact that you're bringing that very expensive period in life for healthcare costs closer and closer, less time to pay and more need to consume, if you gain weight and you don't get the immediate feedback, which you can't now because you can't even ask people how much they weigh, you can't even ask what gender they are, Then you're just going to keep getting away.
And you're going to say, well, you know, I mean, I guess there's problems down the road, but it's not going to impact me financially.
And so when you give people free health care, they just adjust their behavior in general.
To make less wise healthcare decisions.
And this is why it's a hole with no bottom.
You can't fix it.
Now, it's true that longevity has increased.
But that's not fundamentally the result of healthcare.
That's the result of sanitation, better nutrition, a wide variety of other things.
But it is one of these problems.
Now, if you deal with this problem up front, like you put this in place, you realize it's got the wrong incentives, and you change it.
Okay, that's one thing.
But what happens is when you get a generation or two of people Who now have assumed that future healthcare costs will be taken care of and therefore it has subsidized their poor decisions, then when those subsidies are threatened, well, you have a very endangered population.
