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I read an article yesterday about how we need to play in dirt more.\xa0

It's good for your health, that\u2019s why you should \u201cground\u201d yourself. Get your feet in the earth every day, it's good for your health.\xa0

That\u2019s why we love growing our own veggies. 1. They\u2019re fresh and good for your health, 2. your hands are in the dirt.\xa0

And 3. increasingly it is assessed that it\u2019s the grains and greens that is the best thing you can do for your gut, and your gut is pretty much the key to everything.\xa0

It's also a lot easier than finding $1.7 billion over 4 years, which is what David Seymour has had to do for Pharmac.\xa0

Pharmac is modern medicine, and modern medicine is an expensive business, and that\u2019s because we don\u2019t take our health seriously enough and end up with the mess we have in health care.\xa0

We have never been more unwell. In a world where some anyway have never been more well, while at the same time living in an age where new information, life extending, lifesaving information has never been more accessible.\xa0

At the same time Seymour was offering $1.7 billion, another bloke was blowing up at the Health Minister, having been told he needs to wait a year for an op.\xa0

All this is the end of the line stuff. And before you complain too loudly, no, some people don't get a choice. Medical carnage besets them through no fault of their own.\xa0

But for most of us that isn't the case, it is generally the culmination and accumulation of lifestyle. A lifestyle of a western world that knows full well what it is doing to itself and yet would rather debate a Phamac budget, because that easier than changing the way we eat or live.\xa0

Pharmac\u2019s Combined Pharmaceutical Budget (CPB) will be $1.5 billion, which is $6 billon over four years - and the money announced yesterday, which is another 400 plus million every year over 4 years, is merely to top up the underfunding which Labour left behind. This doesn\u2019t improve things; it holds the line. It avoids the cuts.\xa0

And it doesn\u2019t include all the stuff Pharamc and the various pressure and lobby groups around the country will tell you we should be funding but don\u2019t, because we don\u2019t have enough money.\xa0

But then how much is enough? In a country of 5 million, when there are more cost-effective answers than big pharma, how much is enough?\xa0

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