Rural chronic disease

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This article is an on-the-ground view of chronic disease linked with poverty and isolation. But it’s a Macroeconomic problem since vast swatches of rural America have similar problems.

She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease

In places like Mingo County, W.Va., where working-age people are dying at record rates, a nurse learns what it takes to make America healthy.

By Eli Saslow, The New York Times, March 2, 2025

…snip many details of a visiting nurse and her patients at home with multiple chronic diseases and problems associated with poverty and isolation …

Chronic diseases have become endemic in the United States over the last two decades: death rates up 25 percent nationally from diabetes, 40 percent from liver disease, 60 percent from kidney disease, 80 percent from hypertension and more than 95 percent from obesity, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Americans now spend more years living with chronic disease than people in 183 other countries in the World Health Organization…

About half of the county’s 22,000 residents were obese, a quarter of them smoked cigarettes and almost 20 percent were diabetic — numbers that had become increasingly typical in rural America, where working-age adults were dying at higher rates than they were 20 years earlier, according to data from the C.D.C. People in the country’s poorest places were now almost twice as likely to develop chronic disease as those who lived in wealthy, urban centers on the coasts…

Cheap, ultraprocessed foods make up 73 percent of the U.S. food supply… [end quote]

Earlier than about the late 20th century, poor people in rural areas were thin from hunger, not obese from junk food. If they got sick they died since the meds for maintaining people with chronic diseases weren’t available.

The burden of chronic disease in rural areas is pathetic but also costly since their meds are often paid for by the government. If Medicaid is cut many will be left to depend on even costlier emergency room care when they become desperately ill.

There are also political implications. Many rural states absorb far more government resources than they return in taxes. Despite that they also have outsize power relative to their population since each state gets 2 Senators regardless of population. West Virginia has one of the lowest populations and slowest population growth but still gets 2 Senators.

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Rural chronic disease is a very hard nut to crack. These areas are often pervaded with drug and alcohol addiction and there are few good jobs.

Wendy

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The stress of jobs loss in mid career as factories and coal mines close has to be a driver of some of these. Drugs, smoking, drinking, and stresses on relationships–divorce.

Maybe reshoring jobs and manufacturing will take some pressure off. There seem to be many job openings out there for those who want to work. But moving to find work is hard.

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Or, the cost advantages may be such that production stays offshore. Stuff only gets more expensive. As noted before, the objective is to raise enough revenue with tariffs, to allow repeal of the income tax. If production was returned to the US, there would not be enough tariff revenue, to replace the income tax, and the “JCs” would not get a free ride on their $30M paydays.

Steve

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Start of solution, eat right, not garbage.

The Captain

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Many poor people live in “food deserts,” far away from groceries that carry fresh meats, fruits and vegetables. The first problem is transportation. The second is that fresh food is much more expensive than junk food. SNAP will help pay for fresh food but it fills the belly more to buy lots of junk food (such as ramen or pasta) instead of a small amount of fresh food.
Wendy

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Employers don’t want 40-60+ yr-olds working for them, particularly from rural areas. Lack of tech skills and a low education level make older rural workers essentially unemployable for the jobs of the current economy.

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Is America the ultimate proof that Capitalism is good only for the top ten or twenty percent? Food deserts have been mentioned at METaR dozens of times but draw less attention than Global Warming, a politically inspired religion. How many people has Global Warming made sick? How much money could you save by having fewer sick people?

One of the sickening sights I saw in the US was opening of Xmas presents. “This is a keeper!” “Garbage.” Top 10% family!

Sorry, I’m feeling grumpy.

The Captain

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Adulterated food is a “traditional American value”. One of the things TIG was crying about, when the British PM was in town, was the barriers to US food products that the UK has. Same thing with a lot of the EU. They don’t want USain foods.

If you want unadulterated food in the US, you’ll pretty much need to go out and kill a wild animal yourself. Anything farm raised has been shot full of chemicals, for a long time, before it’s slaughtered. Then there are the GMO crops. The FDA claims they are perfectly fine.

Steve

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Not that is am aware of. This is misinformation.

He wants to extend his tax cut bill which expires end of the year. And would like to reduce corporate income taxes. But noone ever said to zero. I think 15% is the goal if he can come up with enough savings saving to avoid major increases in the deficit.

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Yes, raising your own food is an excellent way to insure it is of excellent quality and complies with all safety requirements.

Good idea!!

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We have a lack of bus drivers and trash truck operators, school bus drivers. All it takes is commercial drivers license. Training for these jobs is easy.

One has to want to show up for work. Jobs are out there.

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Nothing wrong with ramen or pasta. Both the Japanese and Italians have longer life expectancies than those in the US.

No, no it’s not misinformation. It’s even on Fox. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.

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My family has had a centuries long love for, devotion to, life in, and ongoing connection to wilderness and therefore the rural areas surrounding wilderness.

We now always pack ice box and chests with real food, as almost all the “wilderness surround” is now food desert, with old fashioned diners shut down and replaced by low quality junk sold from hamburger and soda stands at the top end, and mostly hopelessly nasty junk sold from gas stations and the like. We now plan for food for travel from, for instance, Los Angeles to wilderness near Salt Lake City as carefully as we plan for food while backpacking miles in wilderness.

USA’s rural zones were only recently interesting and hospitable, but now are increasngly rather nightmarish.

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Project 2025 wants to do away with the income tax and replace it with consumption taxes and tariffs. This is not misinformation, this is you being misinformed.

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Thanks for the info. I had missed it.

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My mother told me how grandpa, in the 1930’s would take the pig that had reached butchering size to the front yard; tie it hind legs together toss the other end of the rope over a limb of the tree; hoist it up until it was head down. Then slit the throat and catch the blood for blood sausage. Gut it and soak the intestines in brine to prepare it for the sausage. Apparently every part but the bones and squeal were utilized. I wonder how fast the health department would show up today claiming the process unsanitary and seize the remains to be disposed of.
And just think how today’s neighbor children might be traumatized by watching such an event.

I suppose the only meat slaughtering by individuals today is done by hunters. But I could be wrong.

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Ever see “Roger And Me”? In the sequel, Michael Moore revisited the woman who was selling rabbits “for pets or meat”. The health department had shut her down. She butchered the rabbits about the same way, though she did club them to death, before hanging them from a tree branch.

Steve

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Nice try, but they don’t pay enough to justify anything. School bus driver jobs are targeted at older adults who can handle the job AND the relatively low pay. When you do NOT already live in “the big city”, it is difficult AND expensive to move AND live there–if anyone wants to try it. Guess what? Smart drivers got out of trucking long ago. It doesn’t pay. A relative was a driver–for UPS (decades). Now retired. Companies do not hire “just anyone who shows up”. So the people who want to become truck drivers first have to document they ARE “GOOD truck drivers–with the experience to document it”. So, it won’t happen for the older wannabe truck drivers.

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Today was an extreme day I had 420 calories of junk. Total calorie count was 1900 for the day.

I am building a video game engine or I’d be in bed.

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I help every few years with pig slaughter at one of my rural Mexican neighbors, but it is a little more kindly and crowded than TJ’s ancestor.

Someone (wife of the house) the pig trusts gives him a little food and strokes and talks to him while he stands contentedly on his own feet on cleaned ground, two guys gently firmly take hold at shoulders and rump, I hold basin ready, and knifeman makes one fast long expert cut across throat with very sharp knife, and I catch all the blood I can as pig slumps and dies.

I hope to one day go so easy.

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