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Your health, your responsibility
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AP Photo/Runner's World, Brian Adams
As of late, President Obama and Congress have been tackling the tricky issue of health care reform. This article will avoid the political debate on the advantages and disadvantages of a public program. Instead, it will focus on the merits of personal accountability.
Insurance by definition is meant to be a financial safeguard for unanticipated problems. We don’t pay premiums on auto insurance and then proceed to destroy our cars. Instead, we perform basic maintenance (like replacing tires and brake pads) and drive competently (like stopping at red lights). In the same way, health insurance (private or public) doesn’t exist so that we can abuse our bodies and then wait around for somebody else to fix it.
According to the Trust for America’s Health*, obesity rates nationwide have continued to climb this past year and the state with the lowest obesity rate, Colorado, still has a staggering 18.9% of its population considered obese (and a more horrific 27.2% of its children labeled as obese). Obesity is obviously linked with a plethora of chronic health issues and becomes quite a financial burden for health care professionals and insurers. Ok, so you may not be obese, but are you at your ideal weight? Can you knock out 40 pushups and then go run a mile easily (ladies don’t worry about the pushups)? What’s your diet mostly consisting of? Did you know that the main financial burden on our health care system stems from the treatment of chronic diseases (which could have easily been prevented with a healthier lifestyle)?
Some folks complain that when healthy active people refuse comprehensive health care coverage, it lets insurance companies pick on people with more risk. Thing is, healthy active people are willing to invest in their life and longevity while the people who are labeled with more risk tend to have brought it on themselves (refusal to quit smoking, refusal to get in shape, a fetish for fast food, etc). One should also keep in mind that bad drivers (lots of tickets and crashes) are singled out by auto insurers.
Perhaps, if Americans paid more attention to the their behavior and thought of health insurance in terms of what it actually is (a financial safeguard), then the political debate on health care reform wouldn’t be so intense. After all, your health, your responsibility.
*http://healthyamericans.org/reports/obesity2009/
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