Quite shocking news report about T2 Diabetes in the UK

(icky) #1

This report makes it quite scarily clear how T2 Diabetes affects people… They say in Wales, 8% of adults now have T2 Diabetes…

“It is estimated that 10% of the entire NHS budget is spent on type 2 diabetes”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3NvYFvqRNg

#2

Makes sense, since your healthcare is a gov’t slushfund, it’s the perfect cover for not only keeping the doc’s wallets happy and justifying their existence just as they do here in the US, but there, there’s an added benefit to have reasons to justify your astronomical tax burden over there.

Think on either end what simply telling somebody SUGAR did this to you, and how much money would be lost across the spectrum, so that ain’t gonna happen!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #3

I don’t mind taxes if I’m getting value for money. But the rich mind taxes on principle and would do away with taxes completely (for themselves, at least) if they could, and they can afford the best laws money can buy.

But I wonder whether the cost to the individual is actually any different under a system with national health care. which covers everyone. and which is paid for by taxes, or under a fragmented system with coverage left up to the individual’s luck in finding an insurance plan. I suspect the cost per person is higher in the fragmented system because it’s hidden, since it’s not coming out of a single budget.

In any case, the NHS know how to treat diabetes at lower cost, because they are aware of how many tens of thousands of pounds David Unwin’s Norwood Avenue Surgery and similar practices are saving them in deprescribed and unprescribed diabetes drugs. Now if only someone could get the attention of the new Minister of Health, things could improve greatly in Britain.

The situation is unlikely to change in the U.S., because all the pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies there all own one another. The effect has been to turn the U.S. health care system into a vast drug-prescribing machine, with the highest per capita cost in the world.

(Edith) #4

I would give you a :hearts: for your post, but it is all too depressingly true.

(Denise) #5

I just started going back to the gym yesterday, and there were lots of women my age, and men too, but so many overweight. 2 of the gals were talking in the locker-room after our workouts, and I couldn’t believe their conversation. They’d both belonged to the gym for years (one mentioned 6 years) and they were both huge/overweight.

I was so tempted to ask them what their daily nutrition looks like and/or just tell them about my keto journey. Neither was very friendly to me, but when one left the other started talking to me, but she was all mouth and no ears if you get my drift. I didn’t bother to bring up how keto has changed my life.

Everyone in the pool during the aerobics class I took was over-weight except one lady, and one man. All were my age or older, 71. I think its horrific that more doctors are either getting the info, or aren’t using what they learn. I think Dr. Unwin is at least one of the best doctors in the world and he is actually helping his patients with T2, and he has a clinic full of care-providers that are on the same page.

Anyway, just wanted to bring that up when I saw the topic. There’s so many obese people everywhere I go, my heart really aches for them if they don’t know how to lose the weight by dropping their carbs, or they’ve been told and just won’t do it.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #6

It’s a shame how Dr David Unwins messege is so low profile. His increadible results are overlooked

(Denise) #7

I believe he is very humble, and that could be part of it, and to me, he seems very authentic/genuine and it’s the ones that are all over the internet selling their snake-oil that get the attention of all those in so much need of a “Dr. Unwin” :cry:

And what about those that don’t even get on the internet?? They might be the ones with a shoe-box full of medications like my friend found in her mother’s home after she died :frowning:

#8

I’d argue it’s cheaper, but ultimately it’s impossible to tell, when US healthcare is compared to a tax funded one, it’s never seeing the whole picture. In the UK’s case it’s near impossible because the crazy taxes you’re paying on everything you buy don’t go only to healthcare, then they go to out of pocket cost, but how can you figure that out? We know what we pay in healthcare, and I’d rather know, we have many different plan options and people who are healthy and typically don’t need much can save a ton in high deductible plans, but when catastrophic crap happens, it kicks in any way and does what it needs to do. You pay a little more per visit, but those are minimal when you’re healthy and not a hypochondriac. Then there’s the tax savings of HSA/FSA funds which are tax free and you can use to purchase health related items, which also gets ignored in those comparisons.

So I’d rather pay my 5% tax on purchases, vs 20% on everything, and assume it’s funding things like health care. How much does that other 15% you lose on everything you buy add up to? Because if health care is the excuse, that’s also an out of pocket health care expense, which is ignored because it’s not direct.

Canada’s system is so awesome, half the border is lined with cash pay urgent cares and clinics with parking lots loaded with cars with Canadian plates paying out of pocket vs waiting months for appts in their “free” system.

Being in a lot of fitness and health freak forums I see a huge amount of complaints from both UK, Canada and lots of other smaller countries on all the things their docs won’t do, tests they can’t get because their gov’t regulated health care won’t allow it, and they’re not allowed to just do things on their own because it’s a gov’t monopoly. No thanks!

Maybe I want a DEXA, a coronary calcium scan, specific blood tests, all that’s an option and incredibly easy because the gov’t isn’t stopping us from doing it. Not the case for many!

I fail to see a shred of logic in people, basically everywhere, bashing the gov’t food and health recommendations, how they think we should eat, the fact they want to medicate and not correct issues, but then turn around and want those same people to very literally control our access to health care, pretty sure they already proved themselves a failure there!

The drug situation in the US is crap, no doubt about it, but that’s the gov’t doing that. They make it impossible for pharma to get drugs to market vs what other countries do, and we pay the price for it. No shortage of drugs from US pharma companies get released in other countries long before they do here because their regulating authorities don’t extort them out of billions to get it approved. They’re not going to lose that money, they need to recoup it or stop doing business with the US, and that’s not going to happen.

(KM) #9

I think there’s something to be said on both sides. I don’t particularly like medical care being for-profit. It feels like my life is / could be held for ransom. “According to a 2019 study, medical bills are responsible for [two thirds] of all personal bankruptcies. This amounts to around 530,000 cases each year.” My translation, half a million people who paid money they didn’t have, to keep from dying (or because someone told them it was necessary to keep from dying). That’s criminal.

On the other hand I agree with some of what you’re saying, when publicly funded = unavailable, or funded medicine = ineffective or even counterproductive treatment, that’s no better. :frowning_face:

(icky) #10

The health care system in the USA is the main reason why I would never, ever want to live there. I think it’s inhumane.

Sure, systems like the NHS are more expensive “on the surface” because they show all the real, hidden costs that go unnoticed in countries like the USA.

I know so many people in the US who got things like breast cancer, went bankrupt from the medical costs for it and then end up homeless.

That’s just one of a million similar examples.

Society in the US ends up “paying” for that societially - by losing a productive member of society who was working, contributing taxes, raising their kids, etc… The person becomes homeless, costs the city/ state that way, impacts social cohesion, kids lose their parent, putting the next generation in the way of poverty and deprivation…

A comprehensive health care system like the NHS doesn’t prevent 100% of those cases, but it sure prevents a heck of a lot of them.

I doubt you have “fewer” people in the USA getting diabetes like people in the news report. Did you watch it? It’s quite shocking. And to know that probably 75% of the people in that news report, if they were in the USA wouldn’t get adequate treatment, wouldn’t have limbs amputated, wouldn’t have their failing eyesight treatetd but would be left to basically die like in a third world country… That doesn’t mean the massive medical issues due to diabetes aren’t happening in the US. They’re just happening in poor neighbourhoods, where all the affluent people can “look the other way” and blame those people for eating wrong because it’s their own fault they are poor and uneducated.

(Alec) #11

Dr Unwin has been outrageously successful at reversing T2D in his patients… he has shown his bosses and the medical establishment how to do it. But his methods are not taken up… you have to ask yourself why… I have a feeling money, prestige, and credibility are at the heart of it, and they are 3 really bad reasons,

#12

After what our government in the US did with Covid, I never want a government run healthcare/insurance system ever. EVER. They lost my trust for the rest of my life and will never earn it back. I want my freedoms, and medical freedom is part of that. I don’t want anyone telling me which treatments I have to take and which I can’t. It’s my right to choose how to look after my own health. Not the government’s. You do you but leave me alone to do me.

How can a country so hell bent on preserving the right of a women to choose to abort a baby and openly promote about her bodily autonomy in respect to that, and then remove the right to choose which drugs/treatments we want for a cold or flu? We live in insane times for that contradiction to exist.

Government run healthcare? No thank you. I’ll take the higher expenses if need be to preserve my freedom.

(KM) #13

Sigh. I know. I don’t want OUR healthcare system to just get nationalized, as is, because it’s a corrupt and money-driven mess. Controlling what’s available when that’s entirely about profit (and in some cases religious expression [oppression]) rather than health is a terrible idea. I just think that health and medical care should be a right, not a privilege only of those who can afford it. I have no idea how to prioritize health in a system that’s really just about making more money. :frowning_face:

#14

I notice this every day! Every where I go 80% or more of the people are obese. And even at my gym too. A couple other women who started when I did last year look the same or even fatter. I’m the only one that changed. They say it’s my genes. Obesity is rampant in my family. I’m the only one not obese…but I was! I was very obese before I began this journey. I know it was my diet. I didn’t use the gym the first year when I dropped my initial 35-45lbs. I want so badly to help these women see this isn’t genetics, it’s what they are eating, and share my diet. But I can’t. Not yet anyway. A convo like that has to start organically and start from them.

My heart breaks all the time when in stores or at the doctor office or even just walking in my neighborhood. So many people are incredibly overweight, and clueless to the truth that their weight problem stems from the food supply.

#15

I’m not sure there will ever be a third choice in healthcare. It’s either dictatorial control over all where profit matters more than the health of individuals, and you live with the risk of having constant health problems and the resulting constant poor quality of life, or … it’s medical freedom and some won’t be able to afford the care they need when they need it. In the end for emergency reasons everybody does get the care they need in the US. The hospitals don’t turn life threatening cases away. It’s only the long term diseases that create the real issues of only the rich getting treatment. But I’d still argue most of that treatment is profit driven and not based on sound science so it is not worth what they are paying. In that respect a person who can’t afford healthcare might be better off finding natural remedies outside of the medical institutions.

If I have to choose between only two kinds of healthcare, freedom is better. You can’t always protect everybody equally and trying to hurts more people than the freedom route. Profit will always corrupt any government controlled system anyway.

My friend in Canada over the last 10 years has had nightmare ordeals getting the proper care she needs in a timely manner, and is no better off than if she were in our country. Possibly she might have been better off here because she would have been more likely to have some kind of insurance from her job and had freedom to get help much sooner. And her mother died while on a waiting list there, so she has that anxiety too. So the same number of people are being neglected in either system.

(Denise) #16

I want to add this at the cost of getting some negative feedback but I can handle it :wink: I’ve looked at these fliers/letters in my mail ever since I donated to one, single “BIG” help-organization that sends physicians and nurses over to other countries.

It baffles me because I couldn’t get a provider in CA, for medical or dental. I’m a citizen since birth, and a patriot. But I grew up in a time where it at least looked better to a child, then our children are seeing today. No one wanted to have any emergency help given because they were scared after seeing what happened to many after going to our local hospital.

So, why is it so many toothless people walking our streets, because of no dental care, and eating “handed out carbohydrates” rarely see anything other than cheap “foods” I wouldn’t buy, and sure as hell not going to give that crap to poor people. Why aren’t they honest and lable that crap with “Good for promoting poor health”. It’s like giving away stained, torn, clothing you were too lazy and cheap to take to the dump. Seems like Soylent Green is no longer just a movie :frowning:

(KM) #17

I’m an idealist. I despair because promoting human flourishing within a finite system never seems to be the bottom line value. It seems to me if you start with that, the answers (and the wrong answers) become so much clearer. Start with capitalism and competition and aggression rather than cooperation, you wind up with … this.

And yeah, I know, we’re already so far down that road it’s rather ridiculous to ask everyone to back up and sing Kumbaya … but still … kumbaya …

(Denise) #18

One more thing I’ll add to the discussion, and that is, Healthcare needs to begin at home. Educate ourselves and forget about the “just trust the doctors”, and don’t expect anyone to take care of you if the going gets rough. As my fave weather-man says “don’t be scared be prepared”. Be willing to try things like Keto, exercise (oh man, does that end a conversation with some) :wink:

#19

I fully agree with you. I really do. All my life in schools and in my career people have tried to beat the idealism out of me. :laughing: They tell me I’m hopelessly naive. They laughed at me and rolled their eyes, then set about to discredit me rather than my viewpoints.

So that led to a lot of cynicism. It has caused me to hunker down on “freedom” more these days, and there’s nothing more idealistic than that! :rofl:

I too wish people first valued human life and dignity above all and made that the starting point for any governance. That’s exactly how our Constitution was written too. It’s rather beautiful. But they keep disregarding it and snaking around it due to selfish ambitions. If we just upheld it we could squash the nonsense and get back to these more ideal circumstances and approaches.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #20

He must be going crazy. All his life he was making people sick with drugs and now he’s got the solution he’s ignored. If he can’t beat Big Pharma who can?