By Doug Casey in Conversations with Casey:

It's amusingly coincidental that I happen to have been at a health spa when I wrote an article for this month's Casey Report, on the so-called national health care crisis. That is, of course, mostly hysteria. Overhauling the U.S. medical system will do absolutely nothing to improve the health of the population. American medicine is extremely good for acute problems and diseases, but when it comes to health maintenance, it's next to useless.

You know, Michael Moore, who is physically obese, intellectually dishonest, and philosophically unsound (what a pathetic combination - he should run for Congress), made the argument in his ridiculous movie that the average Cuban is healthier than the average American. That's totally correct - but it has absolutely nothing to do with the health care system. The average Cuban isn't healthier than the average American because his health care system is better. It's a horrible - actually, a primitive health care system. The technology stopped advancing there back in 1960, and the doctors stopped learning new things in that year… medicines… Nothing has changed since 1960. But the average Cuban is in much better health than the average American.

There are two reasons for that: he has a much better diet, which is to say that he eats way fewer calories (and they are unrefined calories), and he gets a lot more exercise than the average American.

When things change in Cuba, so they have a diet like that of the average American and the same kind of transportation as the average American, the average Cuban will be in much worse shape.

People conflate the health of a population with a country's medical system, when these things really have almost nothing to do with each other.

What this actually shows is the degraded state of American society. Instead of taking some personal responsibility for their health and lifestyle choices, they try to rely on medicos to engage in heroic efforts to keep them alive with tubes up their noses after they've become flaccid and bloated from a lifetime of bad habits.

Crux Note: Read the full interview, and get Doug's recommendation on the best health care investment you've never heard of, by signing up for a FREE subscription to Conversations With Casey.

More from Casey Research:

What GM didn't tell you about their electric car

The single most important technology in the energy business

The best - and 100% legal - way to store wealth outside of the U.S.