"Chronic Disease Epidemic" in USA

[Spathi]

America’s Silent Epidemic: The Alarming Rise of Chronic Disease

Explore how chronic diseases are reshaping U.S. healthcare and how RPM, telehealth, and prevention offer a path forward.

www.accuhealth.tech

America’s Silent Epidemic: The Alarming Rise of Chronic Disease

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/03/combating-americas-chronic-disease-epidemic.html

The fact that the chronic disease epidemic persists despite significant expenditures on prevention may indicate that the solution may not lie in more spending on prevention but in “smarter” spending.

RFK Jr.’s Exaggerations on Chronic Disease in Children - FactCheck.org

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has given children’s health and the “chronic disease epidemic” a prominent role in his campaign. Diagnoses of a variety of chronic conditions in children have increased in recent decades, but likely not to the extent that Kennedy claims or...

www.factcheck.org

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has given children’s health and the “chronic disease epidemic” a prominent role in his campaign.

“When John F. Kennedy was president, 6% of American kids had a chronic health condition,” reads a page on Kennedy’s campaign website detailing his intention to “end the chronic disease epidemic” in the U.S. “Today it is 60%. Rates of autoimmune disease, diabetes, ADD and ADHD, autism, obesity, asthma, food allergies, and other chronic health conditions have been skyrocketing.”

I can write here some ideas on the reasons of this, but my ideas can be considered "speculative" and "pseudoscientific".

 

[puc]

Go ahead and be "speculative" and "pseudoscientific".

 

[Spathi]

Go ahead and be "speculative" and "pseudoscientific".

"A cured patient is a lost client" (c). The second point is that modern medicine lacks a holistic approach to health: when a patient comes with a problem, it's solved, but then another problem arises (for a doctor of a different specialization), then another, and so on—so doctors unconsciously help each other make money.

 

[puc]

"A cured patient is a lost client" (c).

Indeed

Profit goes up and integrity goes down. I really wish things were different, but they're not.

It's impossible to get a group of these people to work together. And then there's all the prescribed meds and the seemingly endless mix of side effects that no one will even recognize beyond maybe getting offered yet another prescription to deal with a side effect someone complains about.

Poor diet and a lack of exercise is a real foundational problem. And then there's all the unrecognized effects of food additives. Don't get me started on cheap carbs and sugar.

 

[fresh_42]

Indeed

Profit goes up and integrity goes down. I really wish things were different, but they're not.

It's impossible to get a group of these people to work together. And then there's all the prescribed meds and the seemingly endless mix of side effects that no one will even recognize beyond maybe getting offered yet another prescription to deal with a side effect someone complains about.

Poor diet and a lack of exercise is a real foundational problem. And then there's all the unrecognized effects of food additives. Don't get me started on cheap carbs and sugar.

The contradicting goals of health versus profit are definitely a problem, as is pharmaceutical research on rare diseases.

We have universal healthcare here, and indeed, we (Bismarck) even invented it. However, that means that we are in a constant battle over how to distribute costs. And, as in every public system, we suffer an overburden of administration and bureaucracy. Universal healthcare has its own problems and isn't the solution to all, but still better than competing for shareholder value. The number of private bankruptcies in the US due to medical bills is embarrassing for a country that spends billions each day on its military complex, particularly in the absence of direct threats.

 

[puc]

I wish medical bankruptcy was actually embarrassing to this country. However, it really is mostly ignored, like so many other important things.

 

[Grinkle]

I wish medical bankruptcy was actually embarrassing to this country.

I wonder if you can find even a single US citizen who would say our healthcare system is functioning in an ok manner.

One can be embarrased and still not be able to come up with an implementable plan on how to make things better. Goals are not so hard - single payer system, public option, private but mandatory, medicare buy-in - none of these are plans, they are all goals in my mind, and achieving any of them might make things better. Getting from here to there requires a plan. Telling congress 'do it' is not a plan.

The employer sponsored private insurance scheme that most Americans are insured under is arguably a bedrock pillar of our economy - disrupting it would cause economic pain for many Americans, imo.

Introducing any of the above alternatives and figuring out a tax structure to pay for them seems a tall order for a congress that hasn't even passed a budget in regular order (meaning on-time, using the normal mechanisms for passing a budget) since 1997.

 

[Grinkle]

Poor diet and a lack of exercise is a real foundational problem. And then there's all the unrecognized effects of food additives. Don't get me started on cheap carbs and sugar.

Indeed to this, as well.

I like the below video - nothing deep, mostly a common-sense narrative around the structural causes of American's rise in obesity which imo goes directly to rising healthcare costs and poorer outcomes.

 

[Spathi]

Blogger Veritasium has a video about how DuPont company poisoned the entire planet with fluoroplastics:



PFAS-es are everywhere now, for example, in the blood of Antarctic penguins. It's debatable how high their concentrations are and whether they cause significant deterioration in human health, but why not?
When a potential harm of chemicals is studied, the scientists don't check whether several chemicals are harmless individually but can become dangerous together. I am not saying about more obvious cases when the data about of harm is not published, since the studies are conducted by people with vested interests—a point the video discusses in sufficient details.

 

[puc]

I am an uncomfortable victim of all of these things. Being placed on this unhealthy and profit driven path when I was a small child, well before I could be considered responsible or understanding enough to do much about it, or even care.

I've paid The Price my whole life. As I age the cost has gone up.

The above in response to Grinkle's 'skinny in 1970' video.

 

[Spathi]

I have watched the interview of Robert Kennedy to Tucker Carlson:



Kennedy speaks mostly about the corruption. He is usually accused of spreading "conspiracy theories", but this is evidently incorrect term; what RFK says is the corruption and lobbyism. Everything is very simple - people who have much money, want to have even more, and buy the officials via the revolving door effect. "Nothing personal, only business".
As far as I renember, RFK said in this video, that the amount of paid articles in medicine has significantly increased in last decades, and he had some numbers, but I don't remember the values he mentioned.