soreff comments on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease - Less Wrong

236 Post author: Yvain 30 May 2010 09:16PM

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Comment author: soreff 31 May 2010 07:49:19PM 1 point [-]

One thing I'd like to see covered are conditions that are "treatable" with good lifestyle choices, but whose burden is so onerous that no one would consider them acceptable.

Excellent point. This can even be made considerably stronger: The whole health care debate was about ~15% of our economy (I'm writing from the U.S.). For any given individual, working a 40 hour week, the equivalent cost would be to burden them with ~15% of their working hours with some lifestyle choice (whether 6 hours per week of exercise or some other comparably time consuming action). Lifestyle changes can be damned expensive in terms of opportunity costs.