It is said that for every dollar of the Ontario Government's budget 46 cents is made up of health care spending. That is a lot of money. Of this amount of expenditure 44% of it is on caring for the elderly who are sick and unhealthy, and it is known this population figure is increasing as each year passes. I guess this translates into a lot of acute care and long term care programming and related facilities. Can you imagine if public policy shifted and more expenditure was made in area of prevention and maintenance of individual healthy lifestyles. I bet there wouldn't be so much need for acute care hospital facilities and the percentage of unhealthy elderly people wouldn't be so high as it is now. I'm not sure what the public policy picture would look like to enable this but maybe private companies and public workplaces could be subsidized to provide education to their workers on healthy habits and nutrition, having exercise as part of the work day, maybe even having young people required to have military training for a period of time, but lots could be done to try radical public policy to encourage good health high up into the old ages.
This is just late night wonderings...
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