Exercizing More Improves Health Outcomes

As Tyler Cowen writes, "'health care' is only one way of many to better health care outcomes" which is why it's important and appropriate that the Affordable Care Act addresses health in a variety of ways other than the provision or subsidization of health care services. That's also why it's unfortunate that the House voted yesterday to repeal the creation of a Prevention and Public Health Fund in the Department of Health and Human Services. Especially odd is the stated reasoning for killing the project:

The bill, H.R. 1217, passed in a 236-183 vote. Only four Democrats supported it, as most argued that killing the program would reduce access to preventive healthcare, lead to higher healthcare costs later on and even destroy jobs in the healthcare industry.

Republicans dismissed all of these arguments and repeatedly called the program a "slush fund" that the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) can use without any input from Congress. Republicans said the program is so nonspecific in the law that it allows HHS to use it for dubious purposes, such as signs indicating exercise spots.

Now if you were to say "we'd rather use the money to lower taxes on rich folks" then fine. It's true. If you spend money on improving access to exercise facilities that reduces your ability to use the money to produce lower taxes on rich folks. And a large minority of Americans agree with Ayn Rand and Greg Mankiw that status quo policy in the United States is immorally unfair to rich people, and that taxation of rich people is morally wrong even if it improves overall well-being. But is the proposition that exercising more will promote good health outcomes really controversial? Are we going to start denying this in the name of low taxes? Can we get fitness freak George W Bush to talk this over with congressional Republicans? It's great to disagree about fiscal policy and the public purse, but at a minimum our political leaders should be giving roughly accurate advice to people.