BY KIM BELLARD

Well, as usual, there’s a lot going on in healthcare.  There’s the (potential) Amazon – One Medical acquisition, the CVS – Signify Health deal, and the Walmart – United Healthcare Medicare Advantage collaboration.  Alphabet’s just raised $1b.  Digital health funding may be in somewhat of a slump, but that’s only compared to 2021’s crazy numbers. Yep, if you’re a believer that a revolution in healthcare is right around the corner, there’s a lot of encouraging signs.  

But I was in a Walmart the other day, and my thought was, these people don’t look like they care much about a revolution in healthcare. In fact, they don’t look like they much care about health generally.  That’s not a knock on Walmart or Walmart shoppers, that’s an assessment about Americans’ appetite for changes in our health care.  

That’s not to say we like our healthcare system.  A new AP-NORC survey found that 56% felt that the US did not handle healthcare well (curiously, 12% thought we handled it extremely/very well – huh?).  Prescription drugs, nursing homes, and mental health rated especially low.  We’d like the government to do more, but not, it would seem, if it means we pay higher taxes.

Much of what is wrong is our own fault. We know that we eat too many processed foods, that the food industry scientifically preys on us to target our weaknesses for fat, sugar, and salt, that we’d rather sit than drive and drive than walk, and that we are poisoning our environment, and, in turn, ourselves.  Given a choice between short term benefits versus long term consequences, though, we’ll eat that Oreo every time, literally and metaphorically.