preview

Speech On Health Is Wealth

Decent Essays

We have all heard the aphorism "Health is wealth." It is often proffered as consolation for the financially impoverished. "Never mind that you're not rich," some well-meaning counselor would say. "At least you're healthy, and that's better than all the money in the world."

It's a nice little phrase to toss, but it glosses over a big sad truth: poor people are seldom as healthy as the rich. In the real world, wealth is health. If you're not wealthy, no matter how healthy you seem to be right now, your rich counterparts will probably stay healthy far longer than you will.

Why is this so?

A Growing Gap

A 2016 paper published by The Brookings Institution reports that even among people born as early as the 1920s, the level of one's income already …show more content…

Compare that with patients who cannot even imagine taking time off from work because doing so will mean losing the day's much-needed wages. Or what about the patients who, upon hearing the prescribed treatment regimen, know they will never be able to afford it?

These patients end up leaving the doctor's clinic with the heavy resignation that their disease cannot be cured practicably—therefore, it cannot be cured at all.

Health care access is undeniably a factor in people's longevity.

But you may be surprised to know that, according to a 2007 paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine, access to health care actually accounts for a mere 10% of preventable deaths.

In other words, our greatest killer is not our inability to get treatment for our diseases. What is it then? What accounts for the other 90%?

The hidden 90%

Most people die sooner than they should because of genetic predisposition (30%), behavioral patterns (40%), and social/environmental conditions (20%).

We will not discuss the genetic factor, because that cuts across social classes and income levels.

But what behavioral patterns and social/environmental conditions contribute to earlier

Get Access