Ben Gilbert: commitment

Transcript context

…Yeah, I could see the argument of like, why is the whole taxpayer base covering people who should just be exercising more? Even though it's definitely been proven that that is not the case. It's not their fault. Totally. The Wall Street Journal has this great quote. "The scientific foundation for treating obesity as a disease rather than a lifestyle problem was solidified in the mid 1990s, when researchers discovered that fat tissues release proteins that act as hunger and fullness signals to the brain. This system is out of balance in people with obesity, making it more difficult for them to lose weight. For those who do lose weight, there are biological mechanisms making it hard to keep it off. " What is so interesting about Medicare is that we will all end up on it one day, when we retire and we get off of our private insurance. It does mean that the government is left holding the bag with our health for the long term. There are really two parties with aligned interests for us to stay healthy, ourselves and Uncle Sam. For us, it's actually quite hard to look out for long term interests, because the feedback loop is too long. I go out and drink, even though I'm going to have a hangover the next morning, and that's only a 12-hour feedback loop. Lots of times, you make long term bad decisions. The question is, can Uncle Sam fix that problem in some way? It is far too early to say whether these recent GLP-1s are actually miracle drugs that massively reduce the complications later in life? David, you mentioned there's research being done to figure out it might reduce heart attacks meaningfully, strokes, and liver and kidney disease. But if all of these things turn out to be the case, the American taxpayer has a huge benefit in investing early to keep all of our health care bills down later in life. I don't have a specific proposal. I'm not saying the government should pay for every single person in the country to be on Ozempic. We'll have to see where the studies net out on the benefits of these long term things. Taking the moral thing aside of, does everyone deserve a miracle drug if it exists, even if there is no economics around it, it might just be ROI positive for Medicare to do this if everyone's going to need knee replacements, hip replacements, Diabetes treatment, amputations, and cardiovascular interventions. Right. That is the crux of the broader societal debate and issue here. Obesity leads to such a huge amount of comorbidities, disease, health problems, and issues. That's even just talking about the medical system, let alone everything outside of the medical system that it leads to. Is it worth a certain amount of both risk in terms of the drugs, cost, and tax on society to save those expenses later? That's the question here.…

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