“So What” Attitude is Driving Health Care Costs Skyward

Recently, the Tyra Banks Show promoted Tyra's new "So What" attitude campaign. Tyra had been taking some heat on her apparent weight gain and had enough. Her audience all wore t-shirts with numbers on them. It was their bodyweight. She then had some of them stand up and say something like, "When I walk my thighs rub together, so what." The theme for the show was to ignore your little imperfections and minor flaws and to start loving yourself for who you are. I agree with this wholeheartedly, but unfortunately, despite the show's insistence that this wasn't an excuse for obesity, acceptance of obesity was really what was reflected from this show.

Around the same time, the television show 60 Minutes was reporting on how in 30 some years are Medicaid and Social Security funding will be completely dried up. There were a combination of reasons to why this is happening, but the big reasons were that starting next year the first group of baby boomers will be hitting retirement age. With all those people retiring and fewer wage earners contributing to the system, there won't be enough money left to pay for the benefits of all those people.

The other problem is that Congress passed the prescription drug bill. This bill allows all prescription drugs to be paid for by Medicaid. This is bad. Yes, we are living longer, but we aren't living healthier. Our society is very reactionary. If we acquire a disease, we ask the doctor to give them something to relieve the symptoms. Very rarely do we take proactive action and try to prevent these symptoms from attacking us in the first place. With our obesity rates rising, this is leading to more and more preventable diseases that will require prescriptions written. Which will just drain all the money in those systems.

The "So What" campaign that the Tyra Banks show has been promoting didn't just start with her. It has been going on awhile and it is becoming more and more acceptable to be obese and unhealthy. Remember, Rosie O'Donnell encouraging it on her show. That attitude is, "It is my life darn it. I will live it the way I choose." That is all fine and dandy, but those people are growing exponentially and if the attitude isn't changed, our country is going to be hurting financially very, very soon.

If we can be proactive for a change, a lot of these diseases we pick up can be preventable. We can't wait for the government to create the perfect health care system. We have to take matters into our own hands and that requires us to lose weight and get healthy. No, you don't have to be a stick model to be healthy, but we must realize that our current obesity rate is going to be devastating to this country. Just losing some weight and getting your cardiovascular condition better, can make the difference to acquiring type 2 diabetes or not.

Go ahead and keep saying "So What," but eventually there will be more and more healthy people out there who will respond to that "So What." Especially, when their insurance keeps rising and rising because you go to the hospital 4 or 5 times a year for your poor health. As you grow older, you will be living a long life, but reliant on a constant supply of prescription pills you have to take or you will die. This is what will be affecting their insurance rates and draining our Medicaid system. But hey, "So What."