With no NHL season on right now, I’m getting a real kick out of the US Healthcare debates as I watch from the sidelines. Although I’m not exactly impressed when the anti-reforms make claims about Canada’s system that are just flat-out wrong.

The most concised debate I’ve seen so far is from last week’s Realtime with Bill Maher , which featured a great discussion with 2 Republican senators that raised some clear and concise points on both sides. Not only that, but the debate had Maher himself and Arianna Huffington AGREEING with the Reps on a key point – the public needs to be properly educated on how to maintain their health as a proventative measure against looming health costs.

I concur that more needs to be done to educate people on proper health, exercise, all that fun stuff, but Maher put it pretty blunt at the end of the show what the current level of intelligence is in his country. And it’s all about instant gratification for most folks. Long-term gain “Live longer, feel better” vs Short-term gain “BIG MAC TASTE GOOD!” I’m not one to rant and rail about how “the guvrment shud to more to protecut us!” but there are measures that can be taken to FORCE people to make healthy choices.

For one – tax the hell out of unhealthy, nasty foods and pump that money BACK into real farms. Financial and automotive industries keep on crashing and burning only to get thrown a lifeline by bail-outs, but those industries are so volatile and heavily subject to market whims. Guess what? We ALWAYS need food. Where’s the farmer’s bailout? Sorry, back on track…  Ideally this would drive down the cost of healthy food, and up the cost of unhealthy shit. Of course, this would get big food corps all nasty and lobby-y (just what we need) and I’m sure there’d be lots of backroom deals to get food classified as healthy. It would be nice to think the money would go to honest food production, but then there’s always blow backs like the whole Health Check fiasco…

One doctor in Florida tried to go a few steps further to help educate people on healthy living, unfortunately he felt the wrath of “Big Donut”. Ironic thing is, his job IS actually educating the public on health issues like Swine Flu and AIDS. How many people in the US have died of either vs. the amount that have died due to an unhealthy diet?

Bottom line is that a whole lot of people need a reality check – ie a good smack – and start thinking cause and effect. Put down the donut, back away slowly.

Or we can all just pray our illnesses away. Don’t get me started…