I should run for president, because I've finally figured out why Americans spend so much money on health care.

It's all the money health care providers spend on hiring good-looking actors to stand in wheat fields.

That's before we start counting the costs associated with mowing down entire forests required to make those 25-page glossy notebook-sized fliers they send me every week, providing such pearls of insight as "do what your doctor tells you to."

Oh "¦ I hadn't really thought of that. And here I was, consulting the Magic 8 Ball and flipping coins. I guess that "do what your doctor tell you" mantra especially applies to when I find out my co-pay has doubled.

This has nothing to do with my doctor; a guy I like and trust so much I drive 30 miles round trip to see him, even if he doesn't have the right magazines in his waiting room. No, this is about the people who are supposed to cover my rear end in case my kids or I get malaria during spleen-removal surgery.

As I try reconciling how to pay for my increased health care costs, I'm getting the prettiest, most expensive junk mail from my insurance company, suggesting covering cuts with Band-aids and going to the doctor when I'm sick. Obviously, today's "preventative" health care measures are yesterday's lectures from Grandma.

I just received two pieces of health care literature. One was titled: "My Asthma," featuring a smiling woman spreading a pretty scarf over her head in the middle of a "" you guessed it "" wheat field.

I'm wondering if the graphic artist who planned this thing has any idea what asthma is. For one thing, if that nice lady with the scarf actually had asthma and was in a wheat field at dusk, she'd be clutching her chest and have an inhaler sticking out of her mouth.

If they really wanted to portray "My Asthma" correctly, they'd show someone purple-faced and sweating, gasping for air and clutching a bathroom sink with empty inhalers scattered about, waiting for the ambulance.

The second one I received was entitled "Controlling Your Asthma," with the cover featuring a man in a clear blue swimming pool, holding a very happy and fairly hot mom-type in her swimsuit. Of course that's a good way to control your asthma, because holding a wet, fairly hot mom-type in a swimsuit makes you forget you ever had asthma. It would probably make me forget my head just exploded. In fact, if heath care providers were truly visionary, they could dramatically cut costs by making fairly hot people in pools available for holding whenever we didn't feel well.

Seriously, how stupid do these people think we are? Do they really think that, somehow by picture-association, we'll begin to believe that these diseases are happy things? I realize they can't exactly show someone laid out on the floor with a paramedic jamming a needle full of adrenaline into their chest. But good God, if I have asthma, I don't need a booklet bigger than my employee handbook, suggesting I do things like remember to take my medicine and go to the doctor if my meds don't work.

Then again, it seems to work for the guy in the picture at the beach, squatting down with his blond-haired, blue-eyed son, smiling and pointing at the ocean. No families smile this much while backpacking. There are more pictures of elderly couples running down the beach and happily washing their cars in this thing than in an hour-long Viagra infomercial.

I love the questions in the self-serve checklist they provide, to help you figure out if your asthma is acting up. "Have you felt short of breath? (only when I saw the new Sport Illustrated swimwear edition.) "Have you gone to the Emergency Room because of your asthma?" "Have you passed out and flopped around your living room like a beached tuna until someone throws you into a portable oxygen tent?

I don't know about people with other diseases, but everyone who has asthma knows the drill. Because short of working on Britney Spears' legal team, nothing is worse than not being able to get air in your lungs. I've known that since I was about three, and I'm certainly not the sharpest cleaver in the butcher shop. If you can't breathe, you take your medicine. If that doesn't work, you panic. It's pretty simple, actually. I'd be a lot happier if they stopped spending millions on intelligence-insulting pamphlets and used the money to lower my costs. Then I'd breathe a lot easier.

Reach Tony Hicks at 925-952-2678 or thicks@bayarea newsgroup.com. Read his blog, "Insert Foot," at www.ibabuzz.com/insertfoot.