Health spending: The choice is ours to make

Throughout our lives, we will burden the health-care system.

Some of us will burden it a lot more than others.

B.C. Health Minister Kevin Falcon says health authorities have to chop $360 million from their budgets.

This is a sign of things to come.

Our population is aging, getting fatter, and increasingly suffering from chronic ailments such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

A 2006 B.C. Finance Ministry report projected that by 2017, we'll be spending 71 per cent of the provincial budget on health care.

There's nothing we can do about the aging of our population, but the power to avoid obesity and the chronic diseases rests largely within each of us -- with our power to choose.

We have three options. We can pay higher taxes to keep up with higher health-care costs. We can pay the same taxes and learn to live with much poorer health care. Or we can start consistently making healthy lifestyle choices, and keep taxes down and the health-care system strong.

It's pretty basic. We need to eat better and exercise more.

I'm not even going to start on cigarette smoking, as the choice to quit is much harder to make than decisions to eat better and become more active. That said, quit, now.

Diabetes, much of which can be prevented through a proper diet and adequate exercise, is projected to cost Canadians more than $8 billion a year in health-care expenses by 2016.

Nearly 300,000 British Columbians have diabetes, according to the Health Ministry.

Cardiovascular disease -- including heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure -- is almost entirely preventable through healthy lifestyle choices such as exercising and eating less salt, and already costs us more than $6.5 billion a year in medical expenses across the country.

To get an idea of how individual choices can affect public-health spending, consider this: the Building a Heart Healthy Canada report in February concluded that Canadians would save $2 billion a year in health-care costs if everyone stuck to the recommended salt intake — 1,500 milligrams a day for adults. By population, B.C.'s share of that savings would be $262 million a year.

Next time you're grocery shopping, check the "nutrition facts" on the back of a processed meal. I'm looking right now at a WeightWatchers "Smart Ones" orange-sesame chicken package, which contains 680 milligrams of sodium, nearly half the recommended intake, in just one tiny meal. A small bag of pretzels contains 1,200 milligrams of salt.

Every British Columbian has the right to choose how to eat, how much to exercise, and what to feed the kids.

It's important to remember, though, that our choices have a direct impact on the quality of health care that is available to us, and to our children.

The health minister may not be handy with a scalpel, but he knows how to swing an axe.