In Sickness and In Health

Married people are healthier. Happily married couples live longer. We cost the health care system less than single people, use fewer health care resources, enjoy life more, experience fewer health disruptions, call in sick at work less often, have better sex (and more of it) and generally act as an example the current healthcare debate ignores, but shouldn't.

Marriage itself is a healthful act: It shows society that we're serious about our commitments; it forces men (and women to some extent), to settle down, and stop deliberately unwholesome behaviors; marriage sets a good example to younger people; it strengthens communities in a myriad of ways, and overall, beneficial ones. Marriage is healthy. Promoting strong, solid marriage ought to be a part of the debate raging at present about health care, and the peripheral issues surrounding it. Not only because, as mentioned, marriage can be, and often is, a healthier status in life than remaining single.

But in cases where marriage is the healthier option, there's something missing from the debate: There's no mention of personal responsibility for health. In many of the so-called town-hall debates seen in various media outlets, featured speakers in audiences of every stripe were typical Americans. Sadly, many of those people appeared to be overweight, out of shape, and clearly uninterested in their own health care. Indeed, if the typical American attending those debates were followed, many if not most would have recently arrived there after a multi-calorie, carbohydrate-laden meal that was essentially unhealthy for them. Many would be smokers. Many would demand that, whatever health care program evolved from the current endeavor to alter a broken system would be available to fix whatever physical depredations happened to them due to their own mismanagement of their health.

Here are ways that married couples can, and should, act together, in responsible fashion, to maintain, or to regain their own trend toward a healthful, less resource-taxing lifestyle.