No Amount of Health Care Insurance is a Substitute for Health

In fact, the better the health, the less there is need for health care -- and not that more health care insures health.  Health is something else entirely -- not dependent on health care providers -- but what each individual must provide for themselves.  Nobody else can do it for them.  The fact that we've come to believe very differently -- the opposite, is the measure of its validity.

That's why it is so important for the health care insurance program to take off, that they convince healthy people to buy health care insurance to subsidize the costs of the unhealthiest segment of the population -- who don't care about their health, other than to see a doctor and have them make them well -- and if others won't, why should they themselves?

That's how perverted the whole discussion has become.  It's no longer that one might be the exception that ill health may befall, but now it is a certainty that everyone will suffer that fate in this society.  And so we are much worse off than we ever were before -- where people could choose and suffer their own consequences, rather than everybody having no chance better than the worst.

There have been healthy people for ages -- as well as unhealthy people, who in times past, would just perish -- because there wasn't an army of caregivers to keep alive -- because no society had the affluence to prolong life no matter how unviable it became.  The world still doesn't have that kind of unlimited resources -- and never will.  Difficult choices always have to be made -- and that is what the history of civilization, and the personal lives of every individual has been all about.

Now, people with very comfortable and secure lives, point out that they can't afford to make trips every month, anywhere in the world -- as though that is their entitlement also.  But the easy life is not as easy as it seems -- because when those people aren't making their travels, they are alternately receiving and recovering from a $100,000 heart surgery -- or some other equally expensive and life-changing procedure.  It may be to cut out a part of their gastrointestinal system so they don't digest all that good food and living.  But until it gets so bad, most people just let it pile on to their bodies and strain their organs -- until they qualify for that life-threatening necessity.

If that weren't bad enough, many so-called health conscious people -- actually inflict their own injuries as the inevitable result of their activities -- often in taking extreme risks to prove their fitness.  But things can go wrong jumping out of airplanes -- or off of ski jumps, even if those thrills may reassure one they are still alive -- as well as swimming with the sharks, or driving fast, for that matter.  That's even true with bicycling, when many people think the object is speed and time, rather than safety.  No amount of (health care) insurance, is guarantee for such poor choices and priorities.

It does make an overwhelming difference that one is at the healthiest condition they can be -- that enables them to function and make the best choices of their lives -- because their minds are sharp and clear to do so -- arising from their health.  Unhealthy people, cannot make good decisions -- and that determines the results and outcomes of their lives.  It doesn't just happen -- but are the inevitable result not only of one bad choice, but the many that make bad choices inevitable -- even if it is habitual smoking, or overeating, and never doing anything for themselves anymore -- until finally, they are dependent on an army of caregivers to do everything for them -- just to keep them alive, for no other reason except that it is possible, and they are fully insured to do so.

But we never ask first, what makes life living? -- only that it must be perpetuated for as long as possible -- even against their will and wish -- as though somehow we knew better.  Not surprisingly, that is ruinous for many people -- often young people who have to "sacrifice" their lives, to keep alive another who cannot do so for themselves -- because that was what was always done before.  In that manner, each generation sacrifices for another -- and no one is held accountable for their own lives -- as their prime responsibility -- the meaning of their own existence.

They are too busy "serving" others.  That is what it means to be an indentured servant -- to serve another -- above one's own interests and well-being.  And so we are back to Square One -- when the founders of this nation, sought to create a society free from those predetermined obligations -- to serve everybody else above themselves.  No society works very well that way -- and not for long, because the efficient society, the productive society, is where each has unlimited title to their own efforts and choices -- and not that the most successful, must serve the least.

The strong then become weak, and the weak, weaker -- because they can, and are fully entitled to.