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Super helpful data. One question this raises is this: sickness treatment expenses are mostly covered by third party payers, as you show with the data in this essay. Yet expenses related to preventing health problems are not: my insurance doesn't pay for my gym membership, or for my continuous glucose monitor, or for my fish oil supplements or running shoes.

We subsidize treatment, and thus overconsume. We don't support prevention, and that may at least in part be a factor in why we have the behavioral patterns that reduce life expectancy.

I wonder: what would we see in a system where incentives were different? What if there were financial benefits to people doing the healthy things we know work (work out, lower BMI)? What if insurance companies were able to offer rebates to insureds who made healthier choices, verified by the new tech we have (CGMs, smart watches, wifi connected scales, Dexa scans)?

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