Consistency. 3 day

I am not sure what spurred this train of thought but here it is anyway. Health care costs have skyrocketed over the recent years. There are many reasons for this. I know in our area one aspect of it is all of the illegal immigrants that use the emergency rooms for common colds because the emergency room HAS to care for them even if they have no health insurance. So if they don’t pay for the care, the hospitals absorb the cost which gets passed onto us in the form of higher insurance premiums and higher costs for those of us that DO pay. Unless our government decides to stop looking the other way with these type of individuals there is little that can be done about that part of the problem.

I think a much larger part of the problem is how fat and out of shape tha majority of americans are. This chronic obesity has all sorts of health ramifications that result in astronomical health care costs for many of these people. What I don’t understand is with my car insurance if I am a bad driver or have an accident my premiums rise as a result because I am more of a risk. When you live in a house that is in an area at risk for hurricanes you pay a higher premium as a result. However, you can be as fat as a house and pay the exact same premium as everyone else. It’s BS. The only health related question that insurance companies consider is whether you smoke or not. I just don’t get it. Maybe if people had to be penalized financially for the neglect of their bodies in the form of higher insurance premiums they would think twice about doing it. I mean really, this makes sense. If you are a higher risk you should pay for that risk, especially if the risk is a result of your personal laziness and gluttony.

I’m off tomorrow for my last volleyball tournament of the season. This is a weird one because it starts on friday. We play from 12-5 on Friday and then finish up on Saturday. It is supposed to be a BIG tournament. I am looking forward to seeing South Beach. There should be a lot of “interesting” individuals hanging out there. I have not played volleyball on consecutive days in at least 5 years because of my bad knee. Hopefully vioxx can help me through the 2 days. I have played more volleyball this year than the last 3 years combined. In some ways it was really cool to be back in the mix, traveling around the state to play in the different tournies. In other ways it was a pain in the ass getting frustrated by my play and spending substantial bucks in tournament related expenditures. Besides the 25 buck entry fees I spend at least another 50 bucks per tournament for supplies and gas. Multiply that times 9 tournaments and the financial impact is more than you would expect. I’m not sure what I will be doing next summer.