Have you heard about the health insurance plan that covers your fresh, organic fruits and vegetables?

It's real!

Last summer, I paid a whole dollar for weekly half-boxes of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables as part of a community supported agriculture program. My health insurer paid the rest.

But wait, there's more:

A meditation-based stress-reduction class I took last year also was eligible for reimbursement...

Meditation! You know what else is stress-reducing? Sex. Why don't health insurers cover that? And I don't mean birth control and Viagra. I mean sex itself. Isn't that where we are going? Sex is a health matter. Insurance is going universal, with extensive government-imposed coverage requirements. I think those who have to pay for sex — people with various (undoubtedly health-related) limitations that preclude their acquiring it free — should be reimbursed.

Yes, you have to legalize prostitution first, but the prospect of something else that people like becoming eligible for government-mandated insurance ought to provide the incentive for legalization. As with marijuana, legalization is achieved through medicalization, and there's never a stage where you're simply free and able to seek pleasure. The old restraints will be removed only for the purpose of locking on the new restraints. You will have sex and drugs, when it's your medicine and when you can be made to pay for everyone else's.

Just wait!

I wrote all that without reading the rest of the column, so I'm amused to see what the columnist — Chris Rickert — actually did with the groundwork that got me going. He goes from meditation to sex too:

You don't have to look far to find that sex — at least the kind of sex society values, i.e., that occurring in loving, mature, committed relationships — is a partner with wellness.... Depending on which studies you believe, sex encourages intimacy, in some cases might reduce depression, provides good exercise, reduces pain and may even reduce the risk of cancer.

If a health insurer is going to buy its customers kohlrabi and celeriac to encourage healthy eating, why shouldn't it buy them contraception to encourage more healthful sex? In the end, everyone wins.

He'd just buy contraception at this point, not an actual sex worker's treatments. That seems so unfair. Them that's got shall get. Those with benefits get more benefits. When will government level the playing field?