i am not pro-insurance companies (kill em all i say!), but considering the seismic shifts in what constitutes a measure of health, it is quite impossible to chase 'healthiness' by metrics that doctors can use.
low cholestorol-- not really the best measure of healthiness.
weight-- not necessarily a useful measure of healthiness. bodyfat is best, but very inconvenient to measure regularly.
heartrate-- a lot of individual variance. even ranges are not applicable given the unreliability of cheap measuring methods.
a lot of people with poor endurance, large-shaped cholestorol (the shape is more important than the count and large is worse), no muscle mass and caffeine dependence put up low cholesterol numbers. and they are really sure they are 'healthy'.
as well, carb-heavy diets are awful for vast numbers of people, as are low-fat diets (diet in the 'daily eatins' sense, not weight-loss sense), but that is considered healthy by some doctors and by many people.
whether the government or an insurance company (for or non profit) cuts the check to pay, you can't rely on 'making people healthier' when doctors are as likely to sign off on wildly unhealthy things (like massive amounts of cardio, which is demonstrably not great for you) as they are healthy things (like eating lots of saturated fat-- the 'meat only' diet used to be something that was prescribed for health).
who gets to draw the line in the dirt and determine what constitutes making folks 'healthier' when there is a lot of debate about what constitutes 'healthier and always will be?
healthier is a moving target.
low cholestorol-- not really the best measure of healthiness.
weight-- not necessarily a useful measure of healthiness. bodyfat is best, but very inconvenient to measure regularly.
heartrate-- a lot of individual variance. even ranges are not applicable given the unreliability of cheap measuring methods.
a lot of people with poor endurance, large-shaped cholestorol (the shape is more important than the count and large is worse), no muscle mass and caffeine dependence put up low cholesterol numbers. and they are really sure they are 'healthy'.
as well, carb-heavy diets are awful for vast numbers of people, as are low-fat diets (diet in the 'daily eatins' sense, not weight-loss sense), but that is considered healthy by some doctors and by many people.
whether the government or an insurance company (for or non profit) cuts the check to pay, you can't rely on 'making people healthier' when doctors are as likely to sign off on wildly unhealthy things (like massive amounts of cardio, which is demonstrably not great for you) as they are healthy things (like eating lots of saturated fat-- the 'meat only' diet used to be something that was prescribed for health).
who gets to draw the line in the dirt and determine what constitutes making folks 'healthier' when there is a lot of debate about what constitutes 'healthier and always will be?