Real Time with Bill Maher

Bill Maher:
We won't stop being sick until we stop making ourselves sick. Because there is a point where even the most universal government health program can't help you. They can't outlaw unhealthy food, or alcohol, or cigarettes. Just pot, sadly. Because, you see, the government is not your nanny; they're your dealer. And they've subsidized illness in this country. They have to, there's too much money in it. You see, there's no money in healthy people, and there's no money in dead people. The money is in the middle: people who are alive, sort of, but with one or more chronic conditions that puts them in need of Celebrex, or Nasinex, or Valtrex, or Lunesta. Fifty years ago, children didn't even get Type-2 diabetes. Now it's an emerging epidemic, as are a long list of ailments that used to be rare, and have now been...mainstreamed. Things like asthma, and autism, and acid reflux, and arthritis, allergies, adult acne, attention deficit disorder. And that's just the A's. Doesn't anybody wonder why we live with all this illness? September 28, 2007