Health insurance won’t automatically make you healthy

Madelaine Albanes/Contributing Writer

The burden of paying for medical bills for your family and yourself  is a worrisome circumstance, especially if you’re a college student with many responsibilities.

As college students, our options to stay healthy are narrowed to either paying for health insurance like Obamacare to stay healthy or to use natural remedies to prevent an illness. Maybe you’ve been associated with Obamacare for awhile now but you’re tired of spending money on “monthly average costs of $312 just for being a 30-year old non-smoker on a silver plan” according to the Obamacare website.

While there are many benefits of having Obamacare as an insurance plan, from my personal experience Obamacare has not done any justice for myself or my family. The “insurance” that has kept me away from the hospital and medications has simply been healthy dieting and exercising. Having a healthy diet and exercising regularly doesn’t just keep your mind and body healthy, but it also helps you combat lifelong health issues, such as diabetes.

According to Harvard’s school of Public Health, “clinical trials strongly supports the idea that type 2 diabetes is preventable. The Diabetes Prevention Program examined the effect of weight loss and increased exercise on the development of type 2 diabetes among men and women with high blood sugar readings that hadn’t yet crossed the line to diabetes. In the group assigned to weight loss and exercise, there were 58 percent fewer cases of diabetes after almost three years than in the group assigned to usual care.  Even after the program to promote lifestyle changes ended, the benefits persisted: The risk of diabetes was reduced.”

Now, Obamacare isn’t the thief of our health, the thief is the money being demanded from our wallets. The penalty we are unable to escape paying at the end of the year for not having Obamacare, for example, can also be expensive and perhaps makes individuals feel that their health is not in their control.

So what happens next? Begrudgingly use Obamacare or try healthy dieting and exercising? Maybe for some of you, this is a difficult question to answer but allow me to make a suggestion. Start eating healthy and start exercising now, even if you have a condition. Ask your doctor to recommend natural remedies, like green tea, which has many beneficial factors that can help prevent cancer and boost your immune system.  

Be knowledgeable and question yourself if Obamacare is actually benefiting you,  or if healthy dieting and exercising daily will be what keeps your body going strong as you age.  As college students, there is still time to prevent any potential health conditions that run in your family, you just have to make the effort.

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The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of FIU Student Media Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.

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