Comic Strips

Why go through the trouble to avoid sugar, when I can just shoot some insulin twice a day and have my leg amputated at age 45? /s

It's not just you thinking so it's literally truth. What's the first thing doctors want you to do?

Me: "I landed a new job with good health care coverage! I can finally go to the doctor!"

Doctor: "You should improve your diet and exercise more."

richer people tend to live healthier lives too, no?

YMMV. Richer people tend to have access to more amenities that can improve their health. But there's something of a selection bias. You don't see mega-millionaire celebrities like Chris Farley and John Candy or music celebrities like Amy Winehouse or Kurt Cobain around anymore because the Hollywood lifestyle caught up with them.

Cocaine kills plenty of rich people.

I'm paying for the insurance, but the nearest in-network provider taking new patients is a 90 minute drive. Is that a cousin to "You can't afford healthcare"?

Ours is going up $100/mo next year

You can still get an expensive condition despite living a healthy lifestyle. This comic is bullshit.

You live a healthy lifestyle so you can get a better quality of life. So you don't get out of breath by walking up a flight of stairs, so you have energy to go out after work when you're 40, so you get to play with your grandchildren when you're 70, so you don't have to wither away in a nursing home when you're 80.

What you can do is limited, but the impact on your quality of life can be huge, especially at old age.

Also health care won’t be affordable for long if everyone just decides to indulge in unhealthy food and stops exercising

Free healthcare won’t save you from getting stroke at 40 years old

It won't save you from the stroke but it will warn you of the symptoms and risks, then offer you useful advise on how to avoid the condition as it approaches.

And, for those who have family that have endured a stroke at a relatively young age (my mom suffered one in her late 40s), you'll discover its not a death sentence. You need immediate, highly professional short term care. And then you need a long term recovery plan, typically with some cocktail of pharmaceuticals to expedite it. Finally, you need regular checkups to prevent it from recurring. My mom's currently in her late 70s, no obvious evidence of the condition, and she's had a full, happy life since that very terrifying experience. A big part of that was access to professional health care.

People always tell me that they smoke and eat unhealthy because they don't want to live forever, and they somehow think it makes them sound hard af. My mom died of lung cancer and my dad is overweight as hell. Neither of these things seems fun.

I mean, every alternative to the garbage food we have is too expensive :/ been eating some baked kale with salt myself tho lately, super tasty, would recommend.

And people generally don't take good care of themselves. We're more likely to give our pets medicine than ourselves. But most Americans do not exercise anywhere close to what they should as well.

Idk. They did get rid of home economics in schools so nobody really knows cooking unless they were personally interested in it or had a parent teach them.

That was my reaction. I support universal healthcare but damn... comics like this make me think maybe we don't deserve it.

I get more discouraged the less society tries.

I haven't seen a single prevailing trend within "society". Its a cacophony of behaviors and opinions and organizations.

You're basically describing a park. And we have tons of parks all over the country. They are regularly full of people going out to use them for exercise and entertainment. Idk if there's a correlation between "distance from a public park" and "health outcomes of local residents". But they're attractive amenities that people tend to enjoy, even without a numerical cost-savings figure you can use to justify their expense.