A person's lifestyle choice normally affects their health status. Currently, lifestyle choices continue to present major problems to the healthcare of people. Human lifestyle behavioral choices like the amount of body exercise to do, consumption of tobacco as well as alcohol and substance abuse have a significant influence on the risk of getting chronic diseases such as cancer (Akesson et al., 2014). Getting an understanding of the motive behind people's lifestyle choices like the ones mentioned above and their impact on the health of an individual is a major challenge to the entire society today. The world is now making efforts to develop effective methods of modifying the habits of various social, cultural and economic populations. A major point of worry is when employers in various organizations across the world and the life insurance companies are forced to spend highly on treating diseases that are caused by deliberate lifestyle choices of people. Huge efforts are made by the life insurance companies to give health care to people whose deliberate lifestyle choices enhance the risk of developing chronic diseases. Therefore, individuals with a lifestyle that exacerbates their risk of getting chronic diseases should be charged higher by life insurance companies than those with a behavior that minimizes chances of developing a dangerous illness.
The Framingham heart study
The Framingham study, which began in the year 1948, gave researchers the knowledge regarding the way dietary fat and cholesterol enhance the risk of developing heart health complications (Mahmood et al., 2014). The Framingham study established a significant relationship between cholesterol levels within the blood of a person and the risk of developing a disease of the heart. Data provided by the Framingham study also showed the beneficial role played by high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. The data also demonstrated the negative impact of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (Mahmood et al., 2014). The basic conclusion of the Framingham study was that a minimal level of cholesterol in a person's blood implies a lower risk of developing heart diseases.
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The Alameda County study
The Alameda County study was meant to investigate the normal daily duties and the social support factors in order to identify some of the risk factors that lead to poor health and mortality among people (Johnson-Lawrence et al., 2015). The Alameda County study established seven risk factors that cause the development of poor health among people. The specific risk factors found out by the Alameda County study include consuming excessive alcohol, smoking tobacco, obesity, poor sleeping habits, physical inactivity and bad eating behaviors. Therefore, this study established all these lifestyle choices as risk factors for the development of chronic diseases.
Discussion
The lessons learned from the above two studies show that a lot of the diseases that are being treated at very high costs can be controlled through lifestyle choice changes. It is important that people reduce the costs of healthcare through leading healthy lifestyles. To achieve this goal, companies that offer life insurance services need to start charging people who have lifestyles that exacerbate their chances of developing health complications higher than those who live healthy lifestyles (Liu et al., 2013). If people who smoke tobacco, drink excessive alcohol, have poor feeding habits and lack exercise are charged higher than those who live a healthy lifestyle that is free of these risk factors, then there will be no incentive for them to continue with their risky behaviors. It is one way of reducing the costs of healthcare as well as lowering mortality rates in a country.
Research has established that at least 25% of the cost of healthcare in the United States of America goes to the treatment of diseases caused by the deliberate lifestyle choices of people (Humphreys et al., 2014). These are diseases, which can be reduced by people changing their lifestyle behaviors. This worrying statistics has become not only the concern of insurance companies, but also the governments of countries. While a significant percentage of the cost of healthcare goes to treatment of diseases caused by the lifestyle choices of people, it has emerged that individuals who live this unhealthy lifestyle normally pay only a fraction of the costs that are related to their behaviors. The large share of the health care cost for their diseases is borne by the rest of the population through the higher insurance premiums, government expenditure on healthcare and the benefits to disabilities.
In conclusion, it is vital that policies be formulated to ensure every person pay their fair share of the life insurance premiums. Moreover, there are lawmakers as well as other policy-makers who are already pushing for these reforms to be implemented in the healthcare industry. By insurance companies coming up with measures that would highly charge the people who choose risky lifestyles such as feeding a lot of cholesterol, smoking tobacco and not doing body exercise; the cost of healthcare will be fairly distributed in the society. This redistribution of the healthcare costs from the voluntary health risks to the people who choose to engage in such behaviors will help reduce the cases of unhealthy lifestyles (Ford et al., 2012). Insurance companies can achieve this milestone by asking for personal information from all the subscribers. It cannot be unconstitutional to get information from the subscribers because it is this data that will assist the companies to charge each person a fair share of the insurance premiums. This is the way to go if the cost of healthcare is to be effectively reduced. It will provide the needed incentive to leading a healthy lifestyle hence encourage many people to practice healthy lifestyles.
References
Åkesson, A., Larsson, S. C., Discacciati, A., & Wolk, A. (2014). Low-risk diet and lifestyle habits in the primary prevention of myocardial infarction in men: a population-based prospective cohort study. Journal of the American college of cardiology , 64 (13), 1299-1306.
Ford, E. S., Greenlund, K. J., & Hong, Y. (2012). Ideal cardiovascular health and mortality from all causes and diseases of the circulatory system among adults in the United States. Circulation , 125 (8), 987-995.
Humphreys, B. R., McLeod, L., & Ruseski, J. E. (2014). Physical activity and health outcomes: evidence from Canada. Health Economics , 23 (1), 33-54.
Johnson-Lawrence, V., Galea, S., & Kaplan, G. (2015). Cumulative socioeconomic disadvantage and cardiovascular disease mortality in the Alameda County Study 1965 to 2000. Annals of epidemiology , 25 (2), 65-70.
Liu, L., Lou, S., Xu, K., Meng, Z., Zhang, Q., & Song, K. (2013). Relationship between lifestyle choices and hyperuricemia in Chinese men and women. Clinical rheumatology , 32 (2), 233-239.
Mahmood, S. S., Levy, D., Vasan, R. S., & Wang, T. J. (2014). The Framingham Heart Study and the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease: a historical perspective. The Lancet , 383 (9921), 999-1008.
