My point is that the medical industry prioritizes treatment of expedient consequences over treatment of root causes, and then they bitch that they're so overworked and overwhelmed.
If they were truly interested in un-clogging their hospitals and clearing their dockets, they'd be actively engaged in treating root causes. Sure, maybe alongside the pharmaceutical interventions, but the focus ought to be on the cause.
To your points:
- Most moderately overweight people do not, in fact, know they are. Humans operate on the basis of visual comparison, not medically significant measurements like BMI or visceral fat measurements. If you look approximately like your other overweight coworkers, friends, etc, then you'll assume you're fine (in the genpop case, HN denizens and other data-driven folks likely excluded).
- Many of those who are morbidly obese to the point it's obvious they're much larger than their peers, are likely blind to the actual health consequences of their behavior. The general population is vaguely aware that being fat is not super healthy, but they have no idea of HOW devastatingly unhealthy the actual medical literature indicates. On top of this, you have HAES/fat-acceptance nutcases convincing huge swathes of the obese population that they are perfectly healthy.
The medical industry prioritizes treatment of current problems instead of prevention because that's how incentives are set up in the system. Most treatments are delivered under under a fee-for-service model. Insurers and government generally won't pay to prevent a patient who isn't obese yet from becoming obese.
Any major changes will have to come at the state and federal government level. The medical industry can't do much to change that on it's own.
If they were truly interested in un-clogging their hospitals and clearing their dockets, they'd be actively engaged in treating root causes. Sure, maybe alongside the pharmaceutical interventions, but the focus ought to be on the cause.
To your points:
- Most moderately overweight people do not, in fact, know they are. Humans operate on the basis of visual comparison, not medically significant measurements like BMI or visceral fat measurements. If you look approximately like your other overweight coworkers, friends, etc, then you'll assume you're fine (in the genpop case, HN denizens and other data-driven folks likely excluded).
- Many of those who are morbidly obese to the point it's obvious they're much larger than their peers, are likely blind to the actual health consequences of their behavior. The general population is vaguely aware that being fat is not super healthy, but they have no idea of HOW devastatingly unhealthy the actual medical literature indicates. On top of this, you have HAES/fat-acceptance nutcases convincing huge swathes of the obese population that they are perfectly healthy.