Week 4 Prompt 16: If only they'd pay me!

I love to talk, talk, and talk about health issues.  Getting healthy, eating healthy, how I have done it myself, how your body has the ability to heal itself,  how pharmaceutical companies get richer while people get sicker!  How government programs are set up to keep people fat and feeling like failures!  It's a vicious, insane, cycle!

If only they'd pay me!   I'd be hauling in some overtime!  I would be part of the 500 INC!  I would be in competition with the pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, and USDA would be after my ass!  I would rattle some cages and piss some people off but maybe they would wake up and maybe things would change!  Oh, would I talk!  I would talk, talk, and talk so people would be forced to listen!

The processed foods, medications, and unnecessary surgeries without second opinions, it's making them sicker, some people are dying! We need some major overhaul here!

We hear talk about cutting government funding, programs that help people get medical attention, food, childcare and education.  Don't cut it!  Fix it!

Lets start with food stamps (SNAP) SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM...

                   S~U~P~P~L~E~M~E~N~T~A~L  -  N~U~T~R~I~T~I~O~N...
                                        Get it?  Supplemental?  Nutrition? 
                          Not a complete diet of junk and empty calories!


Many people live off food stamps alone!  Educate them how to budget or better yet, disperse the funds weekly!  Then people would have food for the month instead of only a week or two!  Nutrition, have you seen the shit that some people buy with food stamps?!  Crackers, chips, soda, candy, processed foods, it's obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in the making!  Where is the nutrition in that?!  SNAP should require food from the basic food groups, like fruits, vegetables, carbs, and protein.  With SNAP, anything goes!  That's just not right!  How many young parents out there are uneducated and don't know any better about nutritional value?  It's disgusting to watch the government do this!

The WIC program that helps pregnant moms and young children under five is smart enough to list relatively healthy foods that you are allowed to get on WIC vouchers!  (Example: Cereals need to meet low sugar, peanut butter and beans for protein, carrots and tuna fish for breastfeeding moms...)  They also work on educating young parents on healthy eating and good nutrition for children.  Unfortunately, yup, you guessed it, budget cuts have happened in this area as well!  Go figure!

Start with the food issues, then the medical issues will improve.  It's a win-win.  It would provide healthier food for the entire month.  Your health can't help but improve if you improve eating habits and have access food for every week.

America is obese!  America is sick!  America has problems with access to health care and the cost of health care!  FIX IT!

Access to healthy food regularly --> improved health --> less obesity  --> less illness --> fewer trips to the doctors --> less surgeries --> less medication (fewer side effects)

States cut programs and cut funding, yet they hand out monthly checks to some that are able and even willing to work.  Take a poll on how much money is paid out in TANF and how many recipients are willing to work if only they had a job and maybe some transportation!  Take those people, train them and have them work in positions so helpful programs don't have to be cut!  Some of them WANT jobs!  They just can't find one or the have no way of getting there!  Enlist the city bus to commute them, open a day care center and have some of the stay at home parents that want jobs work them.  This will help meet many needs, it would save programs, give people jobs, and it might even help people get more active instead of being home all day!

I could go on and on...if only I could get paid to talk!