U.S. manages disease, not health - CNN.com

The federal response was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Better known as "Obamacare," it is a complex mix of insurance changes and tax credits. When the act takes effect on January 1, 2014, it will provide access to insurance to about 30 million people who currently don't have it.

Unfortunately, that was the wrong question. So the looming "answer" is wrong as well.

Here's the right question: How can we improve medical care so that it's worth extending it to more people? In other words, how can we create a health care system that helps people become and stay healthy?

I have argued for years that we do not have a health care system in America. We have a disease-management system -- one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.

The brutal fact is that we spend more on health care than any other country -- an estimated $9,348 per capita in 2013 -- and get shockingly little for our money.

The U.S. "currently ranks lowest on a variety of health measures," concludes a new report from an expert panel commissioned by the National Institutes of Health. Specifically, Americans have more obesity, more sexually transmitted diseases, shorter life expectancies and higher infant mortality than the inhabitants of nearly all of the 16 developed "peer" countries studied.

Why? A major culprit is a medical system based on maximizing profits rather than fostering good health.

U.S. manages disease, not health - CNN.com