Something Better Than Health Insurance

I think health insurance is a great concept. The whole HMO debacle aside, it’s a comfort to know that if something bad happens to your health, you won’t have to foot but a fraction of the bill.

But I’m a dreamer, and wish we didn’t need it at all. There are – or, at least used to be- people groups where illness and disease were practically unheard of. Most of the population would live to be much older than the Western average lifespan, without any trace of disease upon dying.

Many of the elderly of the United States use Medicare. Some also carry the Medicare supplement insurance known as Medigap. Why? Why do they have so many conditions of physical degeneration, where their peers on the other side of the globe do not?

The key, of course, is to look at the lifestyles of those long-lived, disease-free people. They:

• Eat local food in its natural state.
• Get tons of exercise every day.
• Drink pure, mineral-rich water.
• Have virtually no toxins in their environment – no cars, no factories, no toxic skin care products or household cleaners.
• Live low-stress lifestyles (because, in large part, they don’t have high-pressure jobs and have very little money).
• Have tightly-kit communities where extended families live together.

In effect, they treat their bodies with respect, not as garbage dumps. And they treat their elderly the same way.

Unlike most Westerners…

So, yeah, carry the level of health insurance you think you need. Thank God for Medicare. But while you do, consider working on never needing to use it. Sure, people may call you a dreamer. They call me “weird” or “extreme.” If such are the tags I must wear in order to have energy, vitality and longevity, I will wear them proudly.