Unclear. The overwhelming majority of healthcare costs for the median American come in the last 6 months of life. The “least costly” method of dying is usually passing away in your sleep out of the blue.
The types of diseases correlated with Big Mac consumption or smoking are not usually “pass away in your sleep without much medical intervention.” They are more likely to be the types of diseases that carry with them long-term, relatively high cost interventions (dialysis, heart surgery, gastric bypass, and other obesity-related interventions.) Same with smoking—significant levels of medical care are allocated to treating people with lung cancer.
While its possible some of those savings are recouped by moneys otherwise sent as social security payments or whatever, it seems unlikely they are a net savings.
This is to say nothing about people who might retire early because of preventable disease (shortened health spans where they provide society with useful work) and other reasons obese people might not produce as much net output that they otherwise would in the alternative where they did not consume so many Big Macs.
Unclear. The overwhelming majority of healthcare costs for the median American come in the last 6 months of life. The “least costly” method of dying is usually passing away in your sleep out of the blue.
The types of diseases correlated with Big Mac consumption or smoking are not usually “pass away in your sleep without much medical intervention.” They are more likely to be the types of diseases that carry with them long-term, relatively high cost interventions (dialysis, heart surgery, gastric bypass, and other obesity-related interventions.) Same with smoking—significant levels of medical care are allocated to treating people with lung cancer.
While its possible some of those savings are recouped by moneys otherwise sent as social security payments or whatever, it seems unlikely they are a net savings.
This is to say nothing about people who might retire early because of preventable disease (shortened health spans where they provide society with useful work) and other reasons obese people might not produce as much net output that they otherwise would in the alternative where they did not consume so many Big Macs.