How Ag Policy Affects Health Care

What's frustrating about the stalled effort at reforming health care is that our health care system desperately needs reform, and has for more than 50 years. But the most pressing issue isn't bureaucracy or health outcomes: It's cost.

Costs are so high that that health care is on course to eat every penny the government has. And it costs you and me 20 cents on the dollar. Think for a moment about what you could do with that much money.

Now consider that the average American spends just 10 cents on the dollar on food.

One thing you could certainly do with those two dimes — and you might just do, if you read this blog — is to buy only organic food. Which could, in turn, quite possibly improve your health. Organic produce most likely has richer nutrient content, but it's also free of most (though not all, as Greg Plotkin points out) chemicals. And most chemicals haven't even been tested for safety; so steering clear is the prudent choice.

But now let's take a moment and consider, as Robyn O'Brien did recently, why organic food costs more: Organic farmers don't get the same subsidies farmers who use chemicals do. (Taxpayers essentially subsidize those chemicals in the name of getting more food, when more isn't what's needed.)

Organic farmers also have to pay to have their food certified as organic, when no other USDA inspection program charges farmers to participate. Nor are they eligible for the same marketing assistance or crop insurance programs as conventional farmers.

Even the playing field, says O'Brien, and you lower the cost of organic food, putting it on more tables.

Even though the difference between organic and conventional produce wouldn't likely have a significant effect on health outcomes, leveling the costs of real food and the junk food that's made from subsidized corn certainly seems like a central tenet of improving Americans' eating habits.

Photo credit: Karindalziel