Healthcare in the Age of Zombies

After two years of working in a medical practice, I'm still shocked when a patient is unwilling to try a diet and/or exercise plan to deal with their health issue before going on a prescription drug. I can sympathize with the patient who, despite a healthy lifestyle, has to go on medicine, as well as the patient who has a condition that can't be treated without medicine. They have no choice. But patients with chronic issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity owe it to themselves to try natural, self-driven methods of controlling their health problems. For one thing, it's less expensive, both for the patient, as well as the population at large. When patients have to get expensive medicine,  insurers pay the price, and guess who they pass that price onto? Yep. All of us.

And while we're talking about money, do people really like taking money out of their pockets to make the pharmaceutical companies even wealthier than they already are?  Sales of pharmaceuticals in the US amounted to $289 billion dollars in 2009, accounting for more than half of all international sales. How about taking care of yourself, and if  you want to give your money away, fund the skatepark or your local Arts Council instead of those pharmaceutical companies :)

Also, why would anyone want  to depend on something if they didn't have to? "Being healthy" might mean just 300  fewer calories a day, and 30 minutes of exercise. Wouldn't that be better, and healthier, than relying on medicines?  Do people go on welfare before trying their best to get a job and take care of their families themselves? Because that's what drugs are like if you haven't tried a healthy lifestyle first: welfare for your body.

Enough of the sobering realism. What if we have a Zombie invasion? The CDC has even prepared a document to prepare us for this event! And sure, it just makes sense to stock up on your medications, but they can't last forever. What do you think will happen when your meds run out? By then, the pharmaceutical companies have probably shut down, and all the workers have been eaten. Are you going to be fit enough to run from a Zombie? Or are you going to be getting sicker and sicker, unable to run from the Zombies because you can't have your pills and you've ignored your fitness?

I'm just sayin'.