Life for Health is a bold reimagining of how we fight chronic disease.
In 1960, Americans could live to 70 and expect to spend about 7 years in ill health. Today, Americans can live a decade longer but spend more than twice as many time in ill health. More years alive but fewer years in good health. It's hardly a bargain.
The biggest driver of shrinking healthspans is chronic disease, led by metabolic issues like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Most disability and cost results from multimorbidity, when a person develops three or more conditions. It's the #1 driver of disability and cost, and not just in a person's retirement. Multimorbidity is starting earlier.
Why? For decades, we've asked one health system to do two wildly different jobs, to solve short-term and emergency issues, along with decades long, complex, ones. It’s impossible for one system to do both. Chronic disease requires a completely different approach, scientifically and financially. Our failure to come to grips with this reality is at the heart of skyrocketing spending and increasing cancer and dementia rates.
The solution? A second system for chronic disease based on life insurance, instead of health insurance.
Part manifesto, part blueprint, Life for Health exposes the design flaws that keep Americans sick and how to fix them. It describes a new system to get Americans and their doctors working together to reverse and prevent disease, and live healthier for longer. Health insurance can continue, just reduced in size to cover routine illnesses and emergencies, while life insurance creates the right long-term alignment, keeping everyone in the system focused on reversing disease, maintaining good health longer, and sharing in the value created.
Unlike other big health care changes that have taken years of political in-fighting, this one is doable within existing laws. Life for Health shows how, blending insight and common sense to offer a truly revolutionary path forward.
At stake for Americans is a decade more of good health, and trillions of dollars in new wealth.
Jeremy Shane is an accomplished entrepreneur and health care thinker, having co-founded and led successful enterprises in health, education, and energy. Jeremy's interest in health care reform began as a policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice. During the aughts, he was part of the founding team of HealthCentral, a unique collection of online health communities to help people overcome chronic and life-threatening disease. Later on, Jeremy helped to educate clinicians, building graduate degree programs for physical therapists and nurse practitioners. He has written about new ways to improve pricing of breakthrough drugs like GLP-1s and cell and gene therapies, and is a non-resident fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center of Health Policy and Economics.
