Last week I watched a few hours of Warren Buffet, the Omaha financial wizard, on CNBC. It was more than entertaining.
Buffet, who is regarded as one of the most respected gurus in the financial world, buys companies, amalgamating them into his monstrous conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, whose stock price jumped from about $100K to about $150K in the past few years. A shrewd investor, Buffet is not afraid of admitting to his mistakes as when he approved a GEICO (a company he owns) credit card. Big mistake. People didn’t pay their balances.
But at 82, he’s beaten the average lifespan of the American male by seven years, which is pretty good considering his BMI would rank him obese. On the show he joked about his breakfast as he held up a cherry coke (he owns about ten percent of Coca Cola) and Oreo cookies. Certainly not a good role model for our country, which suffers both from obesity and the crippling weight of a health care budget straining to treat conditions caused by obesity.
Host Joe Kernen, he also of the obesity genre, bragged about he could eat fried chicken nuggets – with ease – practically daunting the advice of any expert who tries to fix the national health crisis.
I’ll grant you that Coca Cola is a tremendous stock to own. It pays a nice dividend and rarely has a losing year. But its carbonated drinks contain phosphoric acid and the ones with sugar have a ton of it. As a dentist, having seen rampant tooth decay in people with habits of drinking these products, I can’t in good conscience buy this stock. But Warren likes it.
There was discussion about the failure of the government to solve the budget problem and Buffet’s worry about future generations having to deal with this burden is shared by many. Yet, it seems to me that this is the kettle painting the pot black … and complaining about its color. We spend nearly $8,000 per individual per year on health care costs, ranking us number one in health
care per capita expense, world-wide. And yet we rank 36th in longevity. Our health care expense is roughly 20% of the gross domestic product – an amazing but sad statistic, one that will worsen each year as our obesity epidemic continues.
Yet affluent people, like Warren and Joe on CNBC, seem to laugh about it by flaunting bellies that bulge over their belts and diets that correspond to these bellies. A recent Time article by Steven Brill, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, quotes studies done by the McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm that has documented that the US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. Nice.
Americans may be shocked by the $60 billion expense to clean up after the megastorm, Sandy, but, as Mr. Brill points out, we spend more each week on health care. It’s big, big business. And it will remain so as long as Americans eat the way they want to, not the way they should. Lobbying protects industries as long as Washington lawmakers need votes. When computers elect lawmakers,
lobbyists will have to draw unemployment. We won’t see that day. In the meantime, health care groups (hospitals, health professionals organizations, big pharma, and the HMO crowd) spent $5.63 billion on lobbyists in Washington since 1998. Tie that in with what the dairy, beef, fast food, and consumer food (ie, Coca Cola) industries spend on lobbying and you’ve got a good idea of how our
government runs. The eat, drink, and get sick industry is doing well.
But don’t blame Warren or Joe too much: they reflect the average American’s desire to eat and drink whatever looks or tastes “good.” No matter what the cost – either to the individual or to our country. We will not be denied could be the title for a new rap song. I don’t care if I’m overweight, just pass the French fries and Coke and shut up could be a lyric. I can always rely on my medications to fix my medical issues, a common attitude.
On the investing side, Buffet encouraged the little mom-and-pop investor to get “safely” back into the market. No worries, he claimed. Just invest in a low cost stock index mutual fund (that has a piece of many, if not all, stocks in the S&P or Dow). What he didn’t point out is that these index funds lost about 35% in 2008. So yes there is risk.
Buffet, as I am, is a disciple of Benjamin Graham’s bible, The Intelligent Investor, a book that stresses buying a company that is run well and is not overvalued. If a person would invest monthly in such a stock index mutual fund (such as Vanguard’s Total Stock Index Fund), he would, over a period of years, probably have a much larger return than investing money in a money market or certificate of deposit. However most individual investors are prone to the emotions of fear (not buying when the market tanks) and greed (buying when the market is on a roll). Ever since 2008, money has retreated from stock and stock funds and into bonds – for reasons of fear and safety. But now in January and February of 2013, money is returning into stocks, now that fear has subsided. How long this will continue is anyone’s guess. But one thing we don’t have to guess about is our country’s health care problem. We know which way that’s going. Become a LifeNut and change it!
Buffet, who is regarded as one of the most respected gurus in the financial world, buys companies, amalgamating them into his monstrous conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, whose stock price jumped from about $100K to about $150K in the past few years. A shrewd investor, Buffet is not afraid of admitting to his mistakes as when he approved a GEICO (a company he owns) credit card. Big mistake. People didn’t pay their balances.
But at 82, he’s beaten the average lifespan of the American male by seven years, which is pretty good considering his BMI would rank him obese. On the show he joked about his breakfast as he held up a cherry coke (he owns about ten percent of Coca Cola) and Oreo cookies. Certainly not a good role model for our country, which suffers both from obesity and the crippling weight of a health care budget straining to treat conditions caused by obesity.
Host Joe Kernen, he also of the obesity genre, bragged about he could eat fried chicken nuggets – with ease – practically daunting the advice of any expert who tries to fix the national health crisis.
I’ll grant you that Coca Cola is a tremendous stock to own. It pays a nice dividend and rarely has a losing year. But its carbonated drinks contain phosphoric acid and the ones with sugar have a ton of it. As a dentist, having seen rampant tooth decay in people with habits of drinking these products, I can’t in good conscience buy this stock. But Warren likes it.
There was discussion about the failure of the government to solve the budget problem and Buffet’s worry about future generations having to deal with this burden is shared by many. Yet, it seems to me that this is the kettle painting the pot black … and complaining about its color. We spend nearly $8,000 per individual per year on health care costs, ranking us number one in health
care per capita expense, world-wide. And yet we rank 36th in longevity. Our health care expense is roughly 20% of the gross domestic product – an amazing but sad statistic, one that will worsen each year as our obesity epidemic continues.
Yet affluent people, like Warren and Joe on CNBC, seem to laugh about it by flaunting bellies that bulge over their belts and diets that correspond to these bellies. A recent Time article by Steven Brill, Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, quotes studies done by the McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm that has documented that the US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. Nice.
Americans may be shocked by the $60 billion expense to clean up after the megastorm, Sandy, but, as Mr. Brill points out, we spend more each week on health care. It’s big, big business. And it will remain so as long as Americans eat the way they want to, not the way they should. Lobbying protects industries as long as Washington lawmakers need votes. When computers elect lawmakers,
lobbyists will have to draw unemployment. We won’t see that day. In the meantime, health care groups (hospitals, health professionals organizations, big pharma, and the HMO crowd) spent $5.63 billion on lobbyists in Washington since 1998. Tie that in with what the dairy, beef, fast food, and consumer food (ie, Coca Cola) industries spend on lobbying and you’ve got a good idea of how our
government runs. The eat, drink, and get sick industry is doing well.
But don’t blame Warren or Joe too much: they reflect the average American’s desire to eat and drink whatever looks or tastes “good.” No matter what the cost – either to the individual or to our country. We will not be denied could be the title for a new rap song. I don’t care if I’m overweight, just pass the French fries and Coke and shut up could be a lyric. I can always rely on my medications to fix my medical issues, a common attitude.
On the investing side, Buffet encouraged the little mom-and-pop investor to get “safely” back into the market. No worries, he claimed. Just invest in a low cost stock index mutual fund (that has a piece of many, if not all, stocks in the S&P or Dow). What he didn’t point out is that these index funds lost about 35% in 2008. So yes there is risk.
Buffet, as I am, is a disciple of Benjamin Graham’s bible, The Intelligent Investor, a book that stresses buying a company that is run well and is not overvalued. If a person would invest monthly in such a stock index mutual fund (such as Vanguard’s Total Stock Index Fund), he would, over a period of years, probably have a much larger return than investing money in a money market or certificate of deposit. However most individual investors are prone to the emotions of fear (not buying when the market tanks) and greed (buying when the market is on a roll). Ever since 2008, money has retreated from stock and stock funds and into bonds – for reasons of fear and safety. But now in January and February of 2013, money is returning into stocks, now that fear has subsided. How long this will continue is anyone’s guess. But one thing we don’t have to guess about is our country’s health care problem. We know which way that’s going. Become a LifeNut and change it!
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