HOOKED!

It is only now that the health care system is overtaxed and the associated costs are overwhelming, that medical research is most emphatically promoting the simple and cheap : prevention - diet and exercise. Call me a cynic, but while whole industries, from fast food to couch potato home entertainment to on line shopping, to say nothing of the medical industrial complex, were growing as the result of the public's bad choices, there was nary a peep. Eating right and walking were intuitive to and permeated my parents' and grandparents' generations. They lived to be nearly 100; baby boomers, and younger, who prefer to seek the fountain of youth through plastic surgery and pharmaceuticals, are dying off in droves. It's no coincidence that Obama's downpayment/reserve proposal for universal health care was announced on the same day as the results of the latest cancer study. The message is unmistakable: change now or pay. Problem is, from drugs to donuts, as a nation, we're hooked. So which way do we go?

Karen Ann DeLuca