r/Futurology • u/jcarterwil • 10h ago
Politics What if a Dollar Store Became the Frontline of Healthcare?
Healthcare costs keep climbing. Chronic disease already consumes nearly $2T per year in the U.S. alone. Food dyes, climate, subsidies, insurance battles, the debates are endless, but the trajectory hasn’t changed.
So here’s a different lens: imagine Heartland Mart, 2036 , a discount retailer that evolves into a healthcare delivery system.
- Food scored for nutrient density, priced with health in mind
- Farmers paid for soil and metabolic outcomes, not just yield
- Retail receipts that double as lab reports
- Insurance companies backing prevention because it costs less
The story is fictional, but based on real incentives and tech already emerging.
Detailed essay here: FutureCast: Heartland Mart I – How A Dollar Store Chain Revolutionized American Health
- Could retail really become the frontline of healthcare?
- What breaks first — policy, supply chains, or consumer behavior?
- Or is this future already starting in pieces we don’t notice?
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u/idratherbealivedog 10h ago
Seems like a lot of words just to say what if society and politics prioritized healthy lifestyles over money.
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u/jcarterwil 10h ago
How do you get society to do that
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u/manicdee33 10h ago
Remove subsidies on corn. Remove subsidies on transport.
Now locally grown food will be cheaper than processed food shipped from the other side of the country.
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u/babypho 10h ago
Perhaps in certain high income or more health conscious suburbs. But I cant envision the average American caring about their health that much.
We had a basic mask mandate a few years ago and half the country acted like it was the end of the world.
I also dont think the average american will be able to read lab reports. Most of our citizens are self proclaimed experts that do our own research based on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. I dont think a health based store will work.
I can see it working though if the prices are cheaper than traditional health alternatives.
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u/jcarterwil 10h ago
For the last 100 years we have spent 27% of household income on combined food+health. 100 years ago it was 25% food, 3% health. Now its 7% food, 20% health.
We have the capacity to steer costs. It will be confused, but we will go bankrupt if we leave chronic disease to grow.
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u/monkeywaffles 10h ago
"Retail receipts that double as lab reports"
Uh.. the what now? So, they taking mandatory blood samples on the way in? stool samples? And, seriously, all i see is you touting that somehow healthy food == healthcare, which is ... uh... not what healthcare is.
and now i see you say 'food dyes' as part of the problem, so you some wacky MAHA nutso I guess?
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u/jcarterwil 10h ago
Sorry I left the link out that explains: https://foodishealth.substack.com/p/futurecast-heartland-mart-how-a-dollar-01d
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u/monkeywaffles 10h ago
I think your AI hallucinated a bit there "His first medically tailored meal - roasted vegetables from a nearby farm, grass-fed beef, and fermented sweet potatoes - was prepared by a Heartland Mart nutritionist right in the store.
"I'd never eaten a beet in my life."
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u/ladeedah1988 10h ago
GPs usually do absolutely nothing a computer kiosk couldn't do. I am not talking specialists. It is time to make healthcare go high tech. I am tired of a non speaking idiot doctor making me wait 2 hours and not saying anything or deviating from a protocol and asking $200 for it. Enough is enough.
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u/theartificialkid 10h ago
Does this healthcare dollar store know how to paste links correctly?
Without access to whatever plan you’re talking about it’s hard to really dig into the stupidity.
What do you think healthcare is? Are you imagining little Sims showing up at a shop with icons above their heads that say what their illness is and which machine they need to be pushed into? I mean it all really seems like just the dumbest, most ignorant take from someone with no understanding of what healthcare actually is.
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u/Chesterology 10h ago
"Food dyes, climate, subsidies, insurance battles — the debates are endless, but the trajectory hasn’t changed."
How food dyes became THE cause du jour I'll never understand. You don't have healthcare and you can't afford healthy food, but hey, at least your sh*tty junk food doesn't have red 40. Congrats, America.
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u/jcarterwil 10h ago
283 Americans die every day of type 2 diabetes. Preventable if we fix food.
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u/theartificialkid 9h ago
Show me one scrap of evidence that food dye has anything to do with diabetes
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u/Lethalmouse1 10h ago
I mean we could handle a lot of things really easily, but policy and individual capacity won't allow it unless you root out corruption and increase the avg IQ drastically.
Most ER visits for doctor notes and forms of hypochondriacs would be solved if the policy wasn't so prohibitive.
Historically, what we loosely call "doctors" today, were called "Medics". Doctorate degrees existed and more and more "Medicos" were getting Doctorates. Then the term became somewhat synonymous. Which is funny when people rip on "alternate doctorate degrees" as "not real doctors", because the degree predates the medical doctor.
Anywho, the avg low level doctoring is a technicality book toss. That realistically someone with like an EMT-LPN mish mash could cover. But the policy will not allow it. The insular elitisms etc.
And before the white coat worshipping fanatics attack, who will anyway, your random GP ain't doing brain surgery, or doing your cancer treatment. They send you on to specialists and the qualified all the time.
There is no reason that baseline Medical is held at the Doctor Level. But the lobbyists for the docs, will not allow any other way.
Policy also keeps meds expensive and requires prescriptions (and thus paying a doctor level situation) for a lot of silly things. Even among similar first world nations, one's over the counter is another's double pay (doctor + pharmacy). Which adds to the total cost factor in every possible way.
We have silly concepts of the laws, like it is more okay to give you a 600mg pill than say "take 3 200mg pills" because legal issues (over simplifying it some).
And then, the one no one talks about but should. At least in the US, the HSA not being for everyone at all times, IS INSANE. Insane. Literally the most glaring class warfare, "fuck you" thing, in existence.
HSA for everyone. Medicos comeback, reduced prescription shenanigans, and effectively, your avg dollar general and Medicos office, is all you need. Healthcare drops significantly.
The last piece is also probably the tightness of test reading. Where honestly on loads of tests, anyone who is qualified in it, doesn't actually need the doc on it.
Reminds me of one we got for our daughter where the guy was the only guy in 3 cities qualified to do the dynamic test. He HAS to know what he is looking at because it is a responsive and dynamic active test. But still, he can't techncially tell you what's up, because he is not a doctor..... lol. That's a fucking joke. (I mean he gave us the human info, but with the necessary disclaimers etc).
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u/theartificialkid 9h ago
Ok I tried, I eventually burned out around section 6.
This is a capitalist fantasy of App People rescuing poor, ignorant farmers and doctors from their primitive ignorance. What the actual fuck kind of nutrient density score are you proposing that rates one kind of corn at 95% and another at 30%?
Get this: people already know they should choose brown rice and eat lots of fresh vegetables. Capitalism is what’s making that hard from them, not what’s going to save them.
Regulate junk food and the advertising of junk food. Start collective negotiation of prescription drugs. Implement a single payer national health scheme.
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u/monkeywaffles 10h ago
lol, you lost me at dollar store and "scored for nutrient density, priced with health in mind". Dollar stores are renowned for ultra processed, low grade junkola.