Much ado – and appropriately so – is made about Manteca’s peace officers and firefighters.
Public safety – as we like to tell out leaders – should be No. 1 in these difficult economic times.
The truth is that we also owe our longevity and well-being to another group of city workers we take for granted – wastewater treatment workers, water workers, and solid waste workers.
What separates the United States from Third World countries – and even large segments of the rest of the world – is our unparalleled wastewater treatment, clean water that flows from our taps, and our garbage collection system.
Those three things together do more for our individual and collective health than anything else yet devised by man whether it is a flu vaccine, aspirin, or surgical technique.
If you doubt that consider the hundreds of millions of people killed through the ages by the spread of cholera and other diseases from unsafe drinking water as well as human waste. Garbage allowed to pile and not properly disposed breeds venom and various insects that also spread disease.
Everything else builds upon clean water, wastewater treatment, and garbage collection and disposal. Without those three, for example, the excellent record that the San Joaquin Mosquito and Vector Control District has at keeping the mosquito population down would be for naught.
None of those three services are imperiled by the general fund budget crisis thanks to forward thinking by taxpayer advocacy groups years ago that lobbied Sacramento heavily to require general law cities to establish enterprise funds that are financed by charges paid by ratepayers.
I am not overly thrilled about forking over close to $90 a month for water, sewer, and garbage collection nor am I enthused about water and sewer rates going up over the next four years. However, I understand it is a small price to pay for my health and that of my neighbors, and the rest of the community.
The dollar return we get from that $90 a month is tremendous. We have a longer life span and we get sick a lot less often than people did a hundred years ago.
Prevention pays big dividends and is much more cost effective.
It is something that both sides in the national health care debate need to keep in mind. It would be much more effective if we addressed the root of the problem and not just the availability and accessibility to resources after one becomes sick.
Poor nutrition, lack of effective exercise, and substance abuse are major contributors to many of our health care problems in this country. The ailments they can trigger are expensive to treat. The approach we are debating now is akin to having a wastewater treatment system in place but still using untreated water from open ditches that have garbage and other junk tossed into them for drinking purposes.
If the level of this nation’s health is indeed a pressing national concern then we all should act like it.
It should start in our schools. Mandatory physical education should return to all grade levels from kindergarten to 12th grade.
Instead of simply taxing all business to fund a national health care solution, provide them with tax credits for providing employees with health club memberships. Then give those same businesses the ability to offer employees two different heath coverages – a lower employee premium for those who use health clubs and pursue personal fitness and a higher one for those that don’t. It wouldn’t be that difficult to set up ways to verify that someone is pursuing a healthy lifestyle and take pre-existing conditions into account. It is the same principle behind different rates for smokers versus non-smokers.
No one would be forced to do anything but you’d pay the price for not reducing your exposure to various health problems through higher premiums or co-payments.
It brings cost control into the equation as the benefits of exercise and good nutrition address many of the precursors of serious health problems including high blood pressure, cholesterol issues, poor circulation, and blood sugar to name a few.
As for those who opt to abuse substances, they should be given a chance or two at rehab. After that, though, the real question is why society should address a myriad of health problems they create for themselves. The chronic abusers are stealing from everyone else in terms of health care resources and the cost of paying for it.
We can talk all we want about the pros and cons of a public option but in the end it will fail too if all Americans as individuals don’t start accepting personal responsibility while requiring those who repeatedly abuse substances to ultimately be cut off from all but basic medical care.
Prevention has worked to reduce health problems and therefore costs through the treatment of drinking water and our waste water. The same strategy can work for individual health care. And if we want everyone else to pick up the tab or make sure we can access it, then we need to bring something to the table as individuals. That something is pursuing proper nutrition and general fitness.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, e-mail dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
Public safety – as we like to tell out leaders – should be No. 1 in these difficult economic times.
The truth is that we also owe our longevity and well-being to another group of city workers we take for granted – wastewater treatment workers, water workers, and solid waste workers.
What separates the United States from Third World countries – and even large segments of the rest of the world – is our unparalleled wastewater treatment, clean water that flows from our taps, and our garbage collection system.
Those three things together do more for our individual and collective health than anything else yet devised by man whether it is a flu vaccine, aspirin, or surgical technique.
If you doubt that consider the hundreds of millions of people killed through the ages by the spread of cholera and other diseases from unsafe drinking water as well as human waste. Garbage allowed to pile and not properly disposed breeds venom and various insects that also spread disease.
Everything else builds upon clean water, wastewater treatment, and garbage collection and disposal. Without those three, for example, the excellent record that the San Joaquin Mosquito and Vector Control District has at keeping the mosquito population down would be for naught.
None of those three services are imperiled by the general fund budget crisis thanks to forward thinking by taxpayer advocacy groups years ago that lobbied Sacramento heavily to require general law cities to establish enterprise funds that are financed by charges paid by ratepayers.
I am not overly thrilled about forking over close to $90 a month for water, sewer, and garbage collection nor am I enthused about water and sewer rates going up over the next four years. However, I understand it is a small price to pay for my health and that of my neighbors, and the rest of the community.
The dollar return we get from that $90 a month is tremendous. We have a longer life span and we get sick a lot less often than people did a hundred years ago.
Prevention pays big dividends and is much more cost effective.
It is something that both sides in the national health care debate need to keep in mind. It would be much more effective if we addressed the root of the problem and not just the availability and accessibility to resources after one becomes sick.
Poor nutrition, lack of effective exercise, and substance abuse are major contributors to many of our health care problems in this country. The ailments they can trigger are expensive to treat. The approach we are debating now is akin to having a wastewater treatment system in place but still using untreated water from open ditches that have garbage and other junk tossed into them for drinking purposes.
If the level of this nation’s health is indeed a pressing national concern then we all should act like it.
It should start in our schools. Mandatory physical education should return to all grade levels from kindergarten to 12th grade.
Instead of simply taxing all business to fund a national health care solution, provide them with tax credits for providing employees with health club memberships. Then give those same businesses the ability to offer employees two different heath coverages – a lower employee premium for those who use health clubs and pursue personal fitness and a higher one for those that don’t. It wouldn’t be that difficult to set up ways to verify that someone is pursuing a healthy lifestyle and take pre-existing conditions into account. It is the same principle behind different rates for smokers versus non-smokers.
No one would be forced to do anything but you’d pay the price for not reducing your exposure to various health problems through higher premiums or co-payments.
It brings cost control into the equation as the benefits of exercise and good nutrition address many of the precursors of serious health problems including high blood pressure, cholesterol issues, poor circulation, and blood sugar to name a few.
As for those who opt to abuse substances, they should be given a chance or two at rehab. After that, though, the real question is why society should address a myriad of health problems they create for themselves. The chronic abusers are stealing from everyone else in terms of health care resources and the cost of paying for it.
We can talk all we want about the pros and cons of a public option but in the end it will fail too if all Americans as individuals don’t start accepting personal responsibility while requiring those who repeatedly abuse substances to ultimately be cut off from all but basic medical care.
Prevention has worked to reduce health problems and therefore costs through the treatment of drinking water and our waste water. The same strategy can work for individual health care. And if we want everyone else to pick up the tab or make sure we can access it, then we need to bring something to the table as individuals. That something is pursuing proper nutrition and general fitness.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, e-mail dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
