alt Hacker News"Putting the entire population on vitamin D supplements would be too expensive for the country’s national health service, he told me."
This seems absolutely bonkers. Vitamin D is dirt cheap, and if you can think at all beyond first-order effects, the improvement in immune health alone would likely pay for itself in terms of cost to the healthcare system.
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A year of over the counter Vitamin D is around 30 pounds. (Not including bulk discounts or administrative/distribution costs)
The population is 70 million.
So 2.1 billion pounds, about 1% of the total NHS budget.
So do Vitamin D supplements reduce healthcare costs by at least 1%
I guess the logistics of prescribing an entire population of anything is expensive, and overkill when people can supplement it in pills or diet, or just go outside more.
The amount of money lost treating sick people who now have renewed vigour to solve other problems in their life would be just too much