Sydeffexin. We can make life better. We treat nothing, so you can enjoy all the side effects at no risk.

You’ve seen the ads for years. Hey, do your knees hurt? Wuddafuxxin can change your life. Ask your doctor. What are you taking for your Tunnel Vision Disease? Ask your physician about Seewhydexxicin. Is your skin getting worse even after all these years? Has your doctor told you about Pincperfexxscinitol? Are you still depressed after years of therapy? Maybe you should ask about Rilyrilychillinexxinacin? Do you suffer from Beady Eye Syndrome? Try the breakthrough medication Lizycine. [Picture of the good life to follow.]

Erik Satie music keeps playing. Cue butterflies and hummingbirds. “Yes, life can be great! (Quick sotte voce) Possible side effects include rashes, heartburn, acne, diarrhea, constipation, urinary incontinence, gynecomastia in men, hairy backs in women, instantaneous blindness, sudden heart explosions, total shutdown of the immune system, irresistible suicidal impulses, bleeding from every orifice, complete paralysis, gangrene, psychosis-inducing brain tumors, noxiously smelly feet, public tooth loss, and spontaneous human combustion. Do not suspend taking this medication without consulting your physician, which could lead to spree killing in your children's bedroom. Do not take if you’re a male who wants another erection or if you’re a woman of child-bearing years, post-child-bearing years, pregnant, or trans-gender pre-female. Otherwise, Sideffexxin is perfect for you. Unless you’re a smoker or have ever sprained your knee. Consult your physician for best results.”

Okay. As an annihilation of health care quality in the name of contractual health care coverage, ObamaCare is all side effects and no care. Joke. Not a very good one, I concede, unless you’re into gallows humor. Sorry.

But the rest of this is not. The drugs of modern medicine are all about unintended consequences. Here’s an article that has somewhat more authority than my goof on the subject.

Today I’m thinking about two things. How the rest of us survive in the age of ObamaCare and what possible unintended good consequences there might be.

As it happens, there are a couple of workarounds. One for families who have lost their individual or employer insurance. And one for businesses who are trying to resist the extortion of the federal death panel ObamaCare indubitably is without flinging employees into the abyss.

If you’re a person or a family, read this essay about the best way to opt out of ObamaCare.

It’s not insurance per se, but it’s insurance for real, the way close-knit communities like the Mennonites do it. The ObamaCare law allows it. Legal, cheaper, and beyond the reach of the IRS.

If you’re a business, read this, which is about self-insurance, also legal and exempt from ObamaCare, and also cheaper than the federal monstrosity.

Both of these are exemptions the heartless Republicans managed to sneak into the law. Ha.

But there’s a larger point than workarounds. One driven home to me by own experience and a new book called A Physician’s Apology.

The doctor author’s point is that we get too many drugs prescribed to us and we take too many of them without pushing back. He says there are 700,000 emergency room visits a year caused by side effects of prescription drugs. As many as 100,000 deaths might be prescription mistakes of one kind or another.

Which got me thinking, in my contrarian way, that higher premiums, deductibles, and co-pays might work counter to Obama’s purpose. Maybe, just possibly, people will — however improbably and counter-intuitively — discover that they don’t need all the supposed health care they have been receiving. Maybe they’ll stop calling the doctor for every ache and pain and blue mood. Maybe they’ll rediscover that people with abundant food and water are more inclined to be healthy than sick, regardless of all the sick-making propaganda that’s spewed through the media.

I know I was shocked to learn that if and when I’m forced into ObamaCare I’ll be penalized by up to triple premiums because I smoke. Okay. On the other hand, it’s hardly true that I have been a burden on the health care system up to now. In the last 30 years I have been to a medical doctor exactly twice. Once because I had a coldy-flu type thing when I had an important business trip to make by plane (he advised me, icily, not to smoke), and once when I put my hand through a window in a colonial house (c. 1757) with reluctant sashes. I’d bled for hours on an antique couch and needed stitches to clear my name. That’s it.

Things I don’t remember. Like lots of medical check ups as a kid. We only went when we got sick or fell out of a tree, or for occasional shots. We got our vaccinations from Dr. Ware’s sadistic wife. (He was nice; he stitched my head when I fell on the radiator after I jumped on the bed when I’d been told not to. He thought it was funny.) I don’t remember Boppa, who died at 82 with a 17 year old hole in his back, taking lots of pills, and I spent a lot of time with him. As I recall, we both in those days took our aspirin one at a time with a cracker afterwards. I don’t remember much pill-taking by my mother’s parents, who both lived past 90, although my mother did die at just 80 some years after a close call with a too powerful blood pressure pill that nearly exterminated her electrolytes over a decade or so. She seemed frailer after that.

Are you starting to catch my drift? My own approach has always been to stay as far away from doctors, their pills and their procedures, as I can. I’m always befuddled by the statistics relating how many times a year “healthy Americans” visit their doctor. On their side is the fact that I’ve probably had pneumonia twice in the last ten years without receiving antibiotics. There was a moment or two in there when I thought I might die. But I figured I wouldn’t, just like I never have yet. Once they get you into hospital, under medication, obeying their rules, fearing their check ups, you’re done anyway.

And I don’t believe their pronouncements, their certainties, their truths. I’ll close with one provocative example. How many women have been told that rising breast cancer rates are inexplicable, unless they’re the fault of chemicals, pollution, or some other act of man?

Take a look at this. Granted, it’s not definitive. But maybe longevity and immunity are more about trying to do the best you can rather than spending x-number of hours on treadmills and converting to the vegan faith?

I’m no fanatic on the subject of health. All I can boast for myself is that I’m not overweight. But I resent the idea that the government owns my body. It’s MY vehicle to do with as I see fit. If it expires, used up, tomorrow, it has still taken me far enough. It was never my dream to be a fossil in a Hoveround, revolving around a liege lord who calls himself president.

So, still, today, and perhaps for a few months to come, I can say defiantly to my totalitarian master, “This is a bag of bones you have not yet acquired. I have no prescriptions, no illusions about what a phony you are, and no reason to hide from your vain attempt to possess my body. You’ll never get there.”

Problem is, so many of you have so many years ahead of you to proclaim the same defiance. Can you do it?

The me I’m supposed to be at my age. Make sure you don’t wind up this way either. It’s the worst side effect of all. Shammadamma.