We’ve all heard the old adage: “if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.” As our nation is mired in the toughest economic times it has faced in decades, that phrase couldn’t be more true. Most Americans have already gotten over their prior urge to splurge on a plasma TV for the next Super Bowl, to take that dream European vacation, or to drive cars whose fuel tanks cost more to fill than their weekly grocery bill. Thousands who found themselves unemployed after the Wall Street crisis came to a head over the last couple of weeks will soon be sharing that sentiment once the shock of it all wears off.

Just pick up any local paper, scan the web, or watch the evening news, and you will be bombarded with detailed accounts of the U.S.’s dismal economic slump, the government bailout of the Wall Street crisis, the record declines in home sales, the increased costs of gasoline and heating oil, particularly when the next hurricane roils away in the Caribbean. But Vanessa Fuhrman’s Sept 22nd article in the Wall Street Journal, “Consumers Cut Health Spending, As Economic Downturn Takes Toll,” highlights possibly the most frightening casualty of the U.S. economic crisis and boils it all down to the most fundamental level, our personal health. People’s inability and/or choice not to fill life saving prescriptions, go to annual checkups, be screened/monitored for existing conditions, will ultimately cost them much more when their conditions worsens than the co-pay or monthly insurance rate they can’t afford to cover. I can only hope that decreased rate of prescriptions being filled is a reflection of them doing more to improve their current health and prevent becoming ill, but I’m not that optimistic.

The health of our nation comes down to the overall health of its citizens, and for any of our policy leaders to insist (in a feeble effort to allay our fears) that our nation’s “foundation is solid” is as nearsighted as it gets. Maybe they’ve been skipping their annual eye exams for lack of ability to pay? I seriously doubt it.