{"id":5336,"date":"2011-04-26T12:48:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T17:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=5336"},"modified":"2011-06-12T20:03:55","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T01:03:55","slug":"can-hiking-cure-the-u-s-health-care-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2011\/04\/26\/can-hiking-cure-the-u-s-health-care-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Can hiking cure the U.S. health-care crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width:240px; float:right; margin-left:14px; margin-bottom:14px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/busybeingborn\/1420209152\/\" title=\"At the Mission Peak summit by busybeingborn, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1320\/1420209152_216f820b37_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" alt=\"At the Mission Peak summit\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Picture the scenario: you&#8217;re pushing 50, you&#8217;re 40 pounds overweight and you&#8217;re an incorrigible couch potato. A day&#8217;s gonna come soon when somebody in position to get away with making unreasonable demands is going to lay it on the line: <strong>take up hiking or we yank your health coverage<\/strong>. Sounds extreme? I call it a logical extension of what we already know: <!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The U.S. has no political will to confront spiraling health costs. <\/li>\n<li>Prevention is the only proven way to keep the doctor away.  <\/li>\n<li>Simply going on walks regularly can significantly improve physical health and reduce risk of developing expensive maladies like heart disease and diabetes. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But how does this equal hiking curing the health-cost crisis? I know from my own experience that hiking is a great way to lose weight and stay in shape. But when I hiked off my spare tire, I had hills and trails nearby. Most people live way too far from a trailhead to hike regularly for fitness. <\/p>\n<p>But imagine if the boss orders you to take a hike: You drive an hour to the nearest state park and find out, heck, it ain&#8217;t so bad out there in nature with the scenic vistas and singing birds. Only one problem: those hills, roots and rocks are a lot of work. You&#8217;re gonna need to be in a lot better shape the next time out. <\/p>\n<p>Enter the four-walks-a-week fitness regimen that your boss really wants to you to start, and stick with, because regular exercise is the surest way to stay healthy and out of a doctor&#8217;s care.  <\/p>\n<p>To date our natural reluctance to tell people what they can eat, what they can drink and how many hours a day they can kick back in the hammock have shielded us from shape-up-or-ship-out demands via the glass-office types, but I don&#8217;t see how that is sustainable when a huge section of our population is hitting the Golden Years (so named for its capacity to line the pockets of the medical-industrial complex) and our government faces gazillions in unfunded liabilities.<\/p>\n<p>After 9\/11 we abandoned all pretense of privacy at the airport &#8212; it was a crisis after all. And Americans can be reliably counted upon to pull together in a crisis, but only after, as the famous saying goes, all other options have been exhausted.   <\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m thinking that the well-meaning wellness campaigns we&#8217;ve endured all these years are about to kick into high gear. Beer guts will be deemed unpatriotic and people will feel obliged swallow their objections to intrusive &#8220;do as we say or else&#8221; demands because we&#8217;re all in this together and all that.<\/p>\n<p>Walking during the week and taking a hike on the weekends is a simple, economical way to make Americans healthier and ease the crushing cost of health care. The problem is probably too big to walk our way out of, but hiking seems like a good first step.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Picture the scenario: you&#8217;re pushing 50, you&#8217;re 40 pounds overweight and you&#8217;re an incorrigible couch potato. A day&#8217;s gonna come soon when somebody in position to get away with making unreasonable demands is going to lay it on the line:&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2011\/04\/26\/can-hiking-cure-the-u-s-health-care-crisis\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[40],"tags":[505,426,498],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5336"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5918,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions\/5918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}