My wife has a great health insurance plan that includes regular visits to the dentist.  A valuable asset that many covet.  They pay pretty much 100% of all our visits as long as they fit into the ‘normal’ category; once a month whitening’s for the $1,000,000 smile are extra.  Ok, so I’ll get right to it, I had a spot that had the very strong potential to become a cavity in the near future, so I book in to have a ‘preventative resin’ done so the cavity doesn’t happen.  This is where things started to get a little squirrely.The wonderful receptionist gently informs us that the ‘preventative’ resins are not covered under the plan.  Somewhat befuddled I take a moment, and then reply “so you’re telling me that a preventative procedure that is less than half the cost of a full blown cavity to fix is not covered?”  She stares blankly at the screen replying, “that’s what it says”.

Let’s take a moment to digest and to crossover to my point.  The insurance company would rather pay double the cost after the problem has already manifested itself!  Is this starting to sound like another scenario that is near and dear to my heart?  Well if you guessed fitness and the dysfunctional health care model, you would get a gold star.  You want to talk dysfunction, try not taking care of your body for a decade or two; well you can bet you’d run into problems with your health (ie heart problems, cholesterol, injuries, diabetes etc)  Solution?  Head to the doc and get it taken care of; he can’t help?  Get referred and or get surgery, or subsidized narcotics.  What I am trying to get at here is if you had to pay the bill for the repercussions of your poor choices you may choose your steps a little wiser.  The irony here is we do pay for our actions, it may not be monetarily directly out of our pocket (indirectly through taxes here in Canada) but if you can’t keep up with your grandkids, you can’t hike the mountain to enjoy the view, you can’t play the sport you love so much, I would argue you have paid an even greater price.

Do the preventative work, get the resins, start walking, lift some weights and eat better.  You’ll keep your teeth and heck, the quality of the rest of your life will go up, novel idea this prevention business, maybe the insurance companies and government should read my blog?