Wednesday, October 27, 2004

  (Angry geek-girl strikes again!)

Revelation of the Day

Rising health care costs are caused by people who don't take care of themselves, even though in this day and age they should know better.

You know those questionnaires health insurance companies make you fill out? If people with inherited, unpreventable conditions, old people, and smokers have to pay higher health insurance premiums, so should these folks:

- People who eat junk food (i.e. fast foods, soda pop, fried dough in any of its many its forms) more than a couple times a week and exercise no more than 30 minutes a week

- People who get "wasted" more than once a month

- People who stress themselves out and get hypertension working 60-80 hours a week so they can make an extra $50 K a year to afford their latest fashions, jet-skis, beemers, gated communities, artery-clogging junk food, cancer-causing cigars or liver-killing martinis

Why should I suffer rising health care costs--the consequences of these folks' unhealthy choices--when I consciously decide to live simply, eat healthy, simple foods (except for the occasional Taco Bell burrito or hot fudge brownie sundae!), exercise regularly and choose mental health over material things?

Why is so much money being drained from the health insurance systems to treat folks with illnesses they knowingly bring upon themselves (many of these people ignore doctors' advice to cut back or slow down) when there are so many people suffering from unpreventable illnesses?

Why are almost two-thirds of this nation's population suffering from "overnutrition" when two-thirds of the world's population suffers from malnutrition?

Socialize health care? For the ones who take of themselves and get sick from unknown hazards or unpreventable disease, sure. As for the alcoholics, druggies, face-stuffers, couch potatoes, and $100-K-plus-a-year, angina-ridden, corporate-ladder climbers: make 'em pay more, I say.

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