1. Transcend the temporal bonds of this mortal coil to become a glistening sphere of pure energy. This will significantly save on co-pays and, if you’re a woman, you won’t be charged more for insurance — after all, you won’t need pap smears or hormone therapies once your ephemeral husk dissolves into the Allness.
2. Become a vampire — while joining the gibbering masses of the undead is technically considered a pre-existing condition by some insurance companies, not having blood greatly lowers your risk of sickle cell disease.
3. Somehow convince yourself that, even though he’s argued against parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the past, and wants to abolish the ADA, Rand Paul will definitely keep Obamacare’s anti-discrimination provisions in his healthcare plan. Treat the resulting headache with a soothing herbal tea, which is definitely just as good if not better than those phony drugs backed by ‘science’ and ‘decades of peer-reviewed research.’
4. Cure your chronic illness with healing crystals, just like Stein voters always knew you could. Also be sure to drink more water while learning yoga while standing on your head while preparing a tasteful pear and walnut salad.
5. Contact your representatives! With some water and flour, you’ll be able to make the form letters you get back into nifty papier mâché casts. This will really come in handy once you can no longer afford ER bills.
6. Like the mythical Daphne of antiquity, pray to the river god Peneus to turn you into a tree. Heed not the strident clamor of politics, and let the ephemeral cares of man glance off your rippling golden bark, until at last you are cut down by Scott Pruitt.
7. If you’re the parent of a child with a physical or learning disability, take heart in Betsy DeVos’ total disregard for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Your child doesn’t need an education to succeed — after all, with just a bit of luck, and a few modest, multimillion-dollar donations to Republican campaigns, anyone can rise to be cabinet secretary of a field they know almost nothing about.
8. Go full Walter White. Congressional Republicans’ voting to cut the ACA’s $5.5 billion per year program to combat the opioid epidemic means you’ll probably have a lot of competition. But if you work hard and believe in yourself, you too can be the one who knocks.
9. Use an Ouija board to summon the vengeful ghosts of Dr. Jonas Salk and Edward Jenner to wreak their terrible wrath upon the anti-vaxxers. Edward Jenner’s fun, DIY brand of vaccination will also come in handy if you can no longer afford regular checkups.
10. Invest in a cure lodge in the Adirondacks in case tuberculosis makes a comeback. (Or ‘consumption,’ if you want your brand to appeal to savvy, anachronistic hipsters.) Be on the lookout for young, careworn poets who sigh and bemoan that their names were writ in water. Like frail blossoms in the winter wind, their lives will be lost too soon to the ages, but your grandkids might be able to sell their notebooks once they become famous in a century or so.
11. Write a poignant think piece about how rolling back protections for pre-existing conditions, Sessions’ opposition to the ADA, and Trump mocking Serge Kovaleski have undermined decades of progress by disability rights activists. It’s 2017, people! We’re a society that has granted disabled people equal treatment under the law for hundreds and hundreds of days now. This is not who we are! (Also be sure not to use Mr. Kovaleski’s real name, and instead call him ‘that disabled reporter.’)
12. Print out this list and eat it. Ink is high in antioxidants according to an article I read somewhere. Also Jill might still have some healing crystals left — I’ll ask her later in the Allness after our minds blend into a seething mass of eternity, divorced from space, time, and male senators’ very strong opinions on mammograms.
13. Try that herbal supplement that cured your sister’s husband’s niece’s lupus.