Wednesday 27 July 2011

Unintended consequences

Preventative medicine is all the rage these days - how to save lives (and money) by avoiding illness and injury through better diet, behaviour and exercise.

Lots of middle aged blokes are being told to exercise more by their quacks to avoid heart attacks etc. Since their knees are shot and their feet hurt, they take up cycling.

I'm sure lots of policy analyst type boffins ran lots of numbers before this sort of advice was pushed by government to show this would save the health budget a squillion dollars per year.

Just one problem. Those middle aged blokes are now being knocked off, or are falling off their bikes, in record numbers. Emergency admissions for this group have skyrocketed.

I wonder if the boffins ever thought about that little problem when they were doing their predictions of how much money would be saved? It might be cheaper to tell the unfit, fat old farts to go back to eating hamburgers, smoking and then dying quietly in their comfy recliners in front of the TV.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yup, but think of the sales of XL lycra and Oakley shades, they are pulling us out of the global recession one lycra purchase at a time!