SUMMARY: In a recent study by The Harris Poll on behalf of TIME, the overwhelming majority of Americans (78%) admitted to delaying routine medical services and health care appointments due to the coronavirus pandemic. The health care industry should invest more in patient outreach, communication and education.
WHAT’S GOING ON: (Times) Rejecting the advice of its scientific advisers, the federal government has released new dietary recommendations that sound a familiar nutritional refrain, advising Americans to “make every bite count” but dismissing experts’ specific recommendations to set new low targets for consumption of sugar and alcoholic beverages. American adults consume an average of 77 grams of sugar per day, more than 3 times the recommended amount for women. This adds up to around 60 pounds of added sugar annually – that’s six, 10-pound bowling balls.
QUICK READ: It will be more than a year for the U.S. healthcare industry to return to normal, according to a new estimate from InCrowd. Physicians expect the new normal to be sometime around August 2021, once a vaccine for the coronavirus has been distributed. The delay, for some patients, could mean the difference between a lengthy hospital stay and Rx.
QUICK READ: Spending too much leisure time in front of a TV or computer screen appears to dramatically increase the risk for heart disease and premature death from any cause, perhaps regardless of how much exercise one gets, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Obesity is the leading cause of death in America, costing the health care system $1.72 trillion and it’s getting worse.
QUICK READ: American teenagers and young adults are having less sex. Today’s young adults are on track to have fewer sex partners than members of the two preceding generations. People now in their early 20s are two and a half times as likely to be abstinent as Gen Xers were at that age; 15 percent report having had no sex since they reached adulthood. This is not something that can be solved by our pill culture.
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KEY TAKEAWAY: Nearly 40% of adults and 19% of youth are obese , the highest rate the country has ever seen in all adults, according to research released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics. This, of course, means that the public is going to be more dependent on prescription drugs to maintain their health at the same time they complain about big pharma.
KEY TAKEAWAY: With an aging Baby Boomer population, the biggest threat to those that continue to try and build careers is being a caregiver. More than three quarters (78%) of caregivers are incurring out-of-pocket costs as a result of caregiving. AARP estimates that family caregivers, on average, are spending roughly $7,000 per year ($6,954) on out-of-pocket costs related to caregiving in 2016.