Letters to the Editor
pacificwhim
Published Letters: 226 Editor's Choice: 38
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I've got your incentives
[Read the article: Healthcare needs you]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Incentives? I get all the incentives I need to eat my excellent diet, work out like a fiend and stay on top of my weight from watching the Americans around me. When I see 75-year-old men who can barely walk, obese men my own age who are headed for the bypass table by the time they're 50 and the overall breakdown in our health because of the stupid choices we make, I get motivated. I want to be hiking when I'm 80 and swing dancing when I'm 95. I make smart health choices because I fear breaking down as I age and want the joy that comes with a long, healthy life. I also want to teach my daughters the same by example.
If you want to incentivize American healthcare, it's simple: create a govt. single payer system, set health baselines and improvement goals for each citizen, and the more you improve your health each year based on your baselines, your goals and agreed-upon guidelines, the bigger tax rebate you get. Stay a fatass and you keep paying 100%. Lose 50 pounds and get off your high BP medication and get $350 in the mail. It's called personal responsibility. Perhaps it's time we tried it.
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Wrong, wrong, wrong
[Read the article: Sick in the head]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Jesus, you people sound like the clueless assholes who tell people with clinical depression to "get over it." I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder that from time to time will cross over into hypochondria. Fortunately, it's not too bad and I've been able to manage it positively by turning it into motivation to work out like a fiend, eat a great diet and get really healthy. But it never truly goes away.
Hypochondria is not being self-absorbed, having nothing better to do or looking for attention. It is a full-blown, honest-to-Pete fucking anxiety disorder. A mental illness. Not the worst one a person can have, but no picnic, either. So unless you know what it's like to spend 24 hours in a cold sweat because you bled into the toilet bowl after a particularly rough bowel movement, spent six hours obsessively surfing the Web for symptoms and were convinced you had colon cancer, shove your all-knowing "get over it" advice, please.