We Are All In This Together

The health care debate in the United States is a debate of excess. The excess is the money spent on health care vs. the outcome. We are grossly out of shape in our country. We are too fat. Nearly one-third of Americans are clinically obese.

We are arguing about the wrong issue. We need to be debating health and fitness. Stop by your local school one day. It doesn't matter which school; any school between elementry and high school will do. Look at the students. Count how many of them are "over weight." Do you own data collection. How many over weights do you get for each 100 students.

Now check it out at your work. Do the same count. Now just stand on a street corner and do the same research. We are too fat.

Now find where fitness is located in the health care debate. Look hard. You will have to look hard to find any consistent fitness recommendations. What there is to this aspect of the debate comes and goes. That's because this "logical" element of health care lacks organized advocacy.

On the health care side we have insurance companies, doctors, health care providers and the ever present lawyers. They all have more at stake in keeping the system working the same and that does not include fitness.

But why should health fitness be a legislated policy? Being fit and healthy is a personal choice. The truth is we are an over-weight society because we have chosen to be fat. And the culture supports fat over fitness. Just watch the TV advertisements.

I read a comment the other day that went like this: Buy a computer game called "Go Outside and Play." Great advice kids. Take us parents with you.