How could Minnesota regain its status as the healthiest state?
Posted at 6:00 AM on November 27, 2009
by Eric Ringham
(10 Comments)
Filed under: Health
After ranking No. 1 among healthy states for much of this decade, Minnesota has slipped from third place to sixth in the most recent America's Health Rankings report. How could Minnesota regain its status as the healthiest state?
Comments (10)
Don't let the Medical Assistance cut go through.
Sadly, in the last decade or so more immigrants and poor people from Chicago, etc. have moved here. Most are in low skilled jobs where the employer doesn't offer health coverage, and they likely don't have the cultural/educational background that encourages them to eat well, exercise, and of course have access to long-term health insurance, as opposed to using emergency care.
Yes we need a Governor AND business leaders, AND consumers, who say, if the citizenry are healthy they will work harder and produce more. This also
implies that we consumers should/will need to start
paying more for what we buy (products and services);
as the US and MN cannot compete with companies based in countries that offer universal health coverage, thus alleviating the direct cost of an employer providing health insurance.
We must start talking and doing more, so that "we all do better when we all do better".
Promote care of health. Healthcare reform is mostly about getting care when a person is sick and,sadly, Western health care is more about treating illnesses than about maintaining good health. We need to begin a long and probably painful process of looking at our lifestyles and encourage policies that truly focus on healthy diet and behavior instead of indulgence followed by fixing the problems the indulgences caused.
Promote a whole food, plant based diet.
Save General Assistance Medical Care. As of March 1st, funding for this program will end - leaving the 80,000 extremely low-income adults who rely on it every year with few health care options. Most have chronic care needs, and nearly 70% have mental health diagnosis. They are truly the poorest and the sickest among us.
Elect a governor who cares about universal healthcare & clean air
Get more insurance companies/plans to cover things like health club memberships.
First step: abandon all hope of finding a quick fix or an easy anser. (This applies to lots of other issues as well.)
Figure out why we lost ground in the standings* and then elect a DFL candidate for governor.
* We lost it due to Gov. Pawlenty reducing state support for healthcare.
By continuing to create more livable communities with safe routes to school for children and teens to bike and walk and create more healthy habits amongst our youth.
Continuing to expand our transit system to allow people the choice of using transit and their feet or bikes to get to and from work and to run errands. Public transit encourages people to be active.
Creating better infrastructure for transit, walking and biking and moving to a society which truly allows people a choice about how they'd like to travel to and from destinations.
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