Jewish Health Care Plans

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All HMOs serving Jewish patients will have the following slogan: ‘You should only have your health.”

Jews need good health. That is the blessing we give one another: You should only have your health. Health is all we think about. Right now, everybody in America is still trying to figure out the right way to share health coverage. But we Jews know what we need because we know/have every known medical ailment. Now more than ever our voice must be heard. Here is my proposal for some extra stuff that health care and the insurance companies must provide us, as Jews:

Dieticians who Understand the Kosher Diet

Some diets have a cheat day. We need a cheat week.

We won’t change our diet. This is our tradition. Insurance must cover a dietician who will work around gribbines, potato kugel, brisket, kishka, schmaltz, and sponge cake. Most dieticians suggest vegetables. But they’re not for us. We are not animals. The dietician can only work with vegetables that can be eaten with chicken soup, or turned into a kugel.

Shabbat Diet Plan

The diet must include at least two days a week where we can eat whatever we want, so that we can properly keep the Shabbat. When charting our intake, they have to take into account the extra Shabbat soul, which is eating up a lot of the calories, or so we are told. If we put on weight because of the extra Shabbat eating, that must be the dieticians fault.

Interestingly, the great sage, RAMBAM discusses the importance of eating fruits and vegetables. He also discusses the importance of healthy eating and not overly filling yourself up. I have never met anyone who keeps both Shabbat and this RAMBAM.

Cheat Week

Some people have a cheat day. We need a week. This must be scheduled for every couple of weeks, after the Shabbat cheat days. We need more cheat time so that we do not lose our mental health. With that in mind, all holidays must come with extra medical food coverage.

Financial Support for Interval Weight Gains

The insurer may not raise premiums for Jews that have too many Simchas. Due to the regularity of cheat weeks, the insurer must also chart the weekly change of the body type from pre-diabetes to diabetes, depending on the celebrations and holiday seasons.

In addition to the extra post Shabbat and party celebration coverage, the insurer must supply food funds for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and holidays. That is necessary nourishment for quality of life. They must also cover all wedding and Bar/Bat Mitzvah gifts, as those get expensive and worrying about them affect one’s mental health.

Clothes for Cheat Week

Insurance must cover extra pairs of pants. All wardrobes must have at least 5 pant sizes. Four pairs of each size of pant, from 32-42. No real grown Jew should have a waste size of less than 32”. Anybody with a pants size of less than 30” is a heretic, and never properly kept Pesach.

If they insist on one wardrobe per person, insurance must supply Holiday Pants for all. Holiday Pants have an elastic band, allowing them to expand an extra 5 inches over the two-day holiday. They also work for Bar Mitzvah weekends. You can find 8 Day Pants at Kohl’s, which expand up to 12 and a half inches. Due to the full elastic make of the pants, 8 Day Pants can cover you for the whole festival of Passover. Holiday pants are made with elastic. Spandex is too reminiscent of exercise, and that is not festive.

Preventative Health Care

Health care must cover diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, asthma and anxiety. Aside from that and every other sickness that I worry about, all doctors under the plan must know how to find out what is wrong with me, even if I give them the wrong information.

No Human Pain Chart

The doctor should already know that I am aching all over. Having to rate my pain in different parts of the body is not fair to me. I am hurting everywhere.

Gym Membership

Insurance must cover gym membership, so that Jewish people can use the Shfitz.

We don’t need the weight room or the track. We do not exercise through physical toil. We sit in a sauna or steam bath. We go to the gym and shfitz. That is how we work out. We even call the place and the activity the same thing, because you shfitz at the Shfitz; in sentence form, ‘I am going to the Shfitz.’ You don’t shfitz by lifting weights. Were one to play basketball, they still wouldn’t work up as much of a shfitz as going to the Shfitz.

Going to the Shfitz is the closest thing to being in Florida, where people naturally get in shape by stepping outside. In Florida, they do not need the Shfitz. They are already shfitzing. However, for those in the rest of America, we need the insurance to help us stay in shape through heat.

There are the few lucky ones who shfitz when eating; they are already getting enough exercise. They don’t need this coverage.

For those who do not go to the Shfitz, they still have rights to the gym membership, so that they can tell their friends that they belong to a gym.

Spiritual Health

Many Jews choose to pray for health. They say it is easier than going to the gym. I agree.

Synagogue (Shul) Membership

Insurance must cover Shul membership dues.

After eating a Shabbat dinner, it is natural to go to Shul the next morning and to pray for your health. You eat tzimis, fried chicken fat, and kishka and you feel the need to say the Mi Shebeirach blessing for sick people.

Doctors Must Say ‘You Should Only Have Your Health’

This is how Jews end every conversation, because we can’t depend on the insurance companies.

The doctor will be giving you the full service of a prayer as well. This is called comprehensive coverage. ‘You should only have your health,’ will be a requirement for all health provider staff to say when they end their phone calls, as well. ‘You should only have your health’ will be the slogan of all insurance for Jews. This way the companies will focus only on our health and stop asking us questions about our income.

As an addendum to the plan, the insurance must also sponsor the Kiddush Entenmann’s cakes at least once a month, for our spiritual health.

People Who Complain

Jewish guests like to visit sick people in the hospital to share their own problems. This Jewish tradition of not focusing on the patient’s problems, but rather their own, is not well enough known throughout the health care community. They must be aware of this. This is what causes unexpected heart attacks right after surgery.

Providers will make sure that people visiting patients don’t use their personal ailments as a competition piece, for the first three days after the operation. But asking for more than three days would not be fair to the visitors from the congregation. They would be stuck with nothing to talk about. However, for those first few days, the insurer will make sure the conversation doesn’t go to, ‘You think you have it bad? With a broken leg?! At least you have morphine. See my arm? Arthritis. I hope you feel good about yourself; lying in your recliner bed…No. Don’t worry about me. You stay in the bed and relax. My pain is chronic.’

All visitors will be prompted to only say, ‘You should only have your health.’

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