With the cost of health and medical insurance continuing to go through the roof, wouldn’t it be great to find healthcare that didn’t cost us anything?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #12 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Healthcare might be the most contentious compound word in the English language.

Health care, the phrase, only recently became healthcare, the compound concept, a near inevitable progression already recognized by several respected dictionaries.  

In high school, we took a class called Health, which is to say, how to take good care of yourself. Now,healthcare is something government does, or insurance agencies provide for us.    

Whether we think healthcare reform is overdue or overdone, most of us would probably agree it is, and ever will be, overpriced.       

But what if we could enjoy cost-free heathcare—sort of like the citizens of Greece, only for real, with no one else in the E.U. helping pay the bill?     

Maybe cost-free is a phrase that can come to our rescue. We’ll make it compound. Not cost -dash- freebut costfree, a newly evolved word that makes 21^st Century sense, to us if not to our grandparents.  

Or is costfree a compound redundancy? If something is costfree, why don’t we just say it’s free? Well, because nothing’s really, free.  

Anything worthwhile costs us something by way of investment of time, talent, or treasure. It’s the accountability God built into the world’s economy so that, despite our continuing efforts to debase ourselves, we cannot run amok forever.  

Eventually, bohemian youth grow up—though among musician rockers there seems to be a lot of bohemian holdovers into advanced age.

Still, everyone, sooner or later, must pay the piper, unless of course we just keep looking to government to take care of us cradle-to-the-grave.

It’s a hard lesson that I’m afraid our country, or at least a lot of our political leaders, have not learned—the idea that, eventually, we must live within their means. 

But then again, if you’re a duly elected politician of either Party, or you’re an appointed for life or good behavior bureaucrat, when the time comes, you retire and go home. The bill coming due for expansive expenses you created is someone else’s problem. It’s a classic “kick the can down the road” scenario.     

So costfree healthcare makes sense to me. Whatever results from ideologically or partisan-driven political healthcare battles in government, Congress, or state legislatures, we’re not hostage to it.  

We can still do a number of commonsense things for our health.  

We can assume individual responsibility and initiative.  

We don’t have to wait for government or health insurance companies to take these steps. As good stewards of the life God gave us, we can make our own responsible healthcare choices.    

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Allow me to share several ways you can enjoy costfree healthcare:

1. Read the Bible. Numerous studies have demonstrated that regular Scripture reading makes a positive, cumulative impact upon spiritual and emotional and, thus, physical well-being. Don’t read it as a fetish or good luck charm but read and apply the Word in your life. God’s Word never returns to him void of impact.

2. Pray.When I was a kid in Sunday School, teachers told me that reading the Bible is “God talking to us” and praying is “Us talking to God.” Talking to God changes us and bolsters our well-being, no matter how the Lord chooses to respond to our needs and requests.

3. Attend Church.Researchers have repeatedly found that people who attend religious services one or more times per week live longer, healthier lives. Church provides us with community, meaning, and fellowship, all ingredients of better living.

4. Exercise.Regular exercise benefits all human systems, respiratory, digestive, muscular, circulatory, everything. Exercise improves moods, reduces stress, re-energizes energy, maintains weight, purifies skin, enhances sleep. Even just walk—walkers live longer, enjoy better mental acuity, experience lower incidences of disease, age more slowly, reduce risk of catching colds, and more. You don’t have to compete for the Olympics. Just get a step counter app. Walking just 30 minutes per day reaps rewards. It’s impossible to overstate the positive impact of exercise upon our health. Put another way: “Couch potatoes are less healthy potatoes.”

5. Eat Better. We are what we eat. Poor diet, poor health. Better diet, better health.

6. Lose Weight. Some 73% of Americans are overweight or obese.The US spends more per person treating obesity than any other economically advanced country. Presently, overweight issues are at 14% of the country’s total annual healthcare expenditure. Obesity accounts for overtwo-thirds of all diabetes treatment costs, about a quarter of treatment for cardiovascular issues, and 9% for cancer. The moral of the story: burn calories, reduce pounds.

7. Quit Smoking. Walking away from smoking is an act of liberation. A one-pack-per-day smoker spends about $2,292 per year on the habit. Quit smoking and you liberate your pocketbook from daily loss, from higher insurance costs and, believe it or not, from lower resale value on your cars. Quitting liberates you from higher probabilities of heart disease, lung or throat cancer, and other diseases. The first question I’m asked at the Doctor’s office, after my birthdate, is do you smoke? Why is that?

8. Get Sleep. Adequate sleep recharges the body, protects the heart, may increase memory, and generates a long list of other benefits.  

9. Get Rest. Sleep and rest are different. You can be caught up on sleep but still be going full tilt, non-stop, gung-ho in the rat race…over prolonged periods. This is a recipe for myriad health problems. We need rest and relaxation = R&R. God created the world in six days then rested on the seventh. He didn’t rest because he was tired. He rested to enjoy what he’d done. Rest need not be synonymous with doing nothing, though this can be beneficial too. Rest can be recreation, or re-creation. Rest revives, restores, rejuvenates. Rest is detachment from the norm. Jesus combined rest with prayer, drawing away to the mountains, the water, or the Garden of Gethsemane. Rest is best when it reinvigorates the soul.

There are more healthcare measures that arguably don’t cost us a dime. I’ll share those with you in the next podcast. I commend costfree healthcare to you. It’s eminently affordable.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022    

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