Interesting article popped up today on how the healthy population may cost more in terms of healthcare than the obese or smokers. The premise is that the healthy person lives longer and therefore has more opportunity to run up costs in part because they have a longer window to work in.

Let me add a little personal perspective to that. I have been fortunate in my life in that I have lost relatively few people in my immediate family (partially the result of parents who were both late children, and many of my relatives were gone before I was 6). However, lately, the odds have been catching up to me. My parents, my in-laws and many other people close to me are getting older and facing increasingly greater health challenges. One in particular comes to mind.

This friend is a former coach, world champion in sports and just flat out all around great athlete. Never smoked or drank. He is in his 80’s - well into his 80’s. Healthy as a horse. His healthcare costs are piling up - slowly and consistently. Some had written him off at one point. He had a leg amputated due to complications and many saw that as the beginning of the end. For someone less healthy, it probably was. That was nearly two years ago. But well into his 80’s, he is going strong. I actually carried his mother’s casket at her funeral when she was well into her 90’s. I suspect that he will live to a similar age. Ironically, I wrote a piece on him in grade school about how I admired him, and here I find myself over 30 years later writing about him again.

Another friend is much the same way. Never smoked, never drank. Kept her figure. She has had a number of near misses lately. Much to our pleasant surprise, she continues to move forward and recover. A less healthy person would not fare so well. I interviewed her for a high school history project where we taped the conversation to capture some of the pieces of history locked inside of the average person and that might otherwise be lost. She continues to this day to be a wonderful source of history.

 I can point to many others I have known - less healthy, far younger and far shorter illnesses took them. It’s all anecdotal, but it’s hard to ignore. I think this underscores the mission of what we are doing at change:healthcare. It’s easy to think that it’s only the less-than-healthy who need to keep up with their healthcare and the associated costs. But it’s not. It’s all of us.