About four weeks ago I noticed a swelling in my right groin area and did not know if it was some temporary thing or not. When I pressed my left side nothing hurt but when I pressed the right side I was doubled over in pain. With my annual physical scheduled in two and half weeks I waited until I saw my family doctor and on November 14 he told me I had a right inguinal hernia and needed surgery and contacted a surgeon that I saw on November 17th.  Surgery was scheduled for November 23 and the surgeon proceeded with a checklist of questions.  He asked me if I was a smoker, and I said no, as never in my fifty nine years on this earth smoked a cigarette.  He told me that sometimes there can be more complications in surgery with smokers. When the surgical center called me to confirm the surgery they also asked me if I smoked, and when I arrived for my surgery yesterday the nurse asked me the same question as did the anesthesiologist.  This year the American Cancer Society estimates that 160,000 Americans will die from Lung cancer.  An astounding fact is that in the 20th century, approximately 100 million people died world-wide from tobacco-associated diseases.  We as a country are rightly concerned about the 4,300 soldiers we lost since 2001 in Iraq but over one million Americans have died during that same period from lung cancer and our government does not seem to want to be very proactive about that nor does the average American seem to be getting up in arms protesting these preventable deaths.  Our “prevention” of these needless deaths is taxing a pack of cigarettes but not removing them from the market.

When you turn on your television, radio, read the newspapers and magazines, or hundreds of sites on the Internet the main topic of discussion today is health care reform. More emphasis apparently is being place on covering the uninsured rather than on preventive care.  More emphasis is placed on cutting medical costs by forcing doctors and hospitals to go to digital records (good) and cutting Medicare by eight hundred billion dollars over ten years. (bad)  Other than the recent report recommending mammograms be delayed until women reach fifty little has been said about preventive medicine which can save millions of lives and over a trillion dollars in health care costs, lost wages and productivity.

Thirty years ago when you went to the supermarket or shopping mall overweight people stood out.  Today when you go to the supermarket or shopping mall it’s the slender people who appear in the minority.  The average weight of Americans is way beyond what it should be. In our schools teenagers weighing over 200 lbs is no longer seen as rare. Diabetes is becoming an epidemic, and with diabetes and being overweight there will be more deaths from heart attacks and strokes. Over 200,000 Americans die every year from diabetes or diabetes related illnesses.  Last year more than 500,000 Americans died of heart attacks.  Each year more than 800,000 Americans have strokes.  Many of these will become incapacitated or die. A majority of these can be prevented!

Simply put, more than five million Americans have died from heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, and diabetes since we went to war with Iraq yet we seem to be more focused on losing 4,300 people in a war than five million also needless deaths, the majority of which could have been prevented.  Where in the health care reform bills in Congress does our government make an aggressive effort in preventive care that can drastically reduce the deaths from smoking, heart disease, strokes, and diabetes?  NO WHERE! 

Wouldn’t some of the near one trillion dollars in stimulus money be better spent on a blitzgrieg of advertising on the Internet, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television on preventing the deaths these diseases cause? One billion dollars over the course of the year could saturate American with helpful ads about preventing illness. Is one billion too much when we just spent a trillion dollars on bailing out the financial industry? What is more important - Goldman Sachs or the health and lives of our citizens??  Wouldn’t town hall meetings all across America with Congressman and Senators accompanied by physicians be helpful in a full court press to end the millions of NEEDLESS deaths that are occuring because we are not doing enough as a nation to substantially decrease smoking, overeating and obesity?  Colonoscopies, mammograms, pap smears, and prostate screenings have saved the lives of millions of Americans and they should be free for every American but if we as nation don’t make an effort like none we ever made before to stop cigarette smoking and obesity than we never will have true health care reform and all we will be doing is making sure the funeral industry continues to be the one industry that doesn’t experience a downturn when our economy goes south again.