Pills are never free!

Monday – March 7, 2011

Pills are never free!

Often times, a simple comment can be an engaging experience or one that raises your blood pressure.

I admit - like thousands of Americans I have prescriptions to fill. At my age, sometimes it’s best to lower cholesterol and blood pressure! Sometimes it’s best to improve your diet and get some help along the way. My doctor is excellent and his advice on these prescriptions, along with diet and exercise, has pretty much done the trick. However, I still can’t walk away from family history and hereditary issues.

My diet has improved, I exercise when I can and enjoy food and wine, you know, all the bad stuff, with moderation. My blood pressure is now 120 over 80 and my cholesterol levels are in check. Other than that, I am a fit American.

But how do we define being fit?

I was at my local drugstore picking up my prescription last Friday and I made the comment, “a buck a pill”. No, this was not for Viagra, you know the purple pill, it was for blood pressure. The pharmacist’s assistant who was tending to the sale laughed.

She said, “You don’t know half of it.”

I said, “Half of what?”

She said, “The cost of this should not be this high. There is greed and the pharmaceuticals could give this away and still profit. Even this place could afford to give it away.”

I said how could they profit if they give something away?

She went on to tell me how the executives and politicians are part of the problem.
I said I can see how politicians can be, I write a FORUM everyday discussing this and I do know a bit about the healthcare industry and business. But I don’t know how executives are part of the scenario that you speak of.

She then said, “Well, our own governor owned a business.”

I said yes he did, but his salary for being governor is now a dollar a year, he is a man of means, because he was a successful executive and owner of a successful business who employed thousands.

She then said, “Well, he owned a business and he took money away from all of us.”

At that point I signed the flex pay receipt and promptly went home to take a high blood pressure pill to lower my blood pressure that was going through the ceiling.

I wish that all our society needed was pill that would wise up some people. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. Unfortunately, we do have people that think business is evil and that business takes money out of their pockets. Unfortunately, some of us have to work and yes, some of us make more than others. I own my business and sometimes I don’t take a pay check.

After considering what I was going to write about today, I thought that this story should be told, because this thought process is now common among many Americans. It is also this pattern of thought that, unfortunately, many of our young people have, as well.

The question I posed earlier of how do we define what being fit is, is one that needs to be answered and one that needs a cure. It is not cured by a purple pill, it is not cured without engaging in thoughtful conversation and offering thoughtful examples of how our society works and how many people have improved themselves through self reliance and working hard.

Part of the answer of how do we define what being fit is, begins with understanding what is meant by giving something away for something in return. When a person is offered a job it should be considered a great thing. Today, it is not considered a great thing, because a job is now something that people need in order to just get by. If this scenario is permitted to go on then we will as a society forget that when you get a job you also have to give something in return to keep that job. When people work to just get by, all incentive is lost and all incentive to better yourself gets clouded, because you really do think that things should be free.

This not only scares me, but it becomes part of a thinking pattern that can destroy initiative and security. When we look at family history and hereditary issues we then begin to understand how thought patterns develop and how they are passed from one generation to the other. The same thing can be said for a country’s family history and its hereditary issues. A country cannot survive when it is debt ridden and when its health becomes threatened, because of its diet.

Our countries diet of foreign oil, foreign money and giving away its internal and external security is now becoming a hereditary issue, because it is now being passed down to other generations that won’t know any thing different. Just like the pharmacist assistant who looks at her job now as something that should be given to her, like free pills, the incentive to continually go back to the counter and ask for more becomes incurable.

A simple pill can cure some symptoms, but if you’re not willing to change your diet and do the exercise that is needed, then you run the risk of never becoming healthy and always having to pay for the pill, because pills are never free.

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: This week the Iowa Caucuses will be in the news. This week a possible presidential candidate who best prescribes what pill is needed will come out ahead. This week the candidate must diagnose the nation’s health problem. We cannot bare the consequences of another misdiagnosis and another wrong prescription because a person doesn’t know his profession.