Universal healthcare and the waistline police | csmonitor.com
Sedalia, Colo. - Imagine a country where the government regularly checks the waistlines of citizens over age 40. Anyone deemed too fat would be required to undergo diet counseling. Those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further “reeducation” and their communities subject to stiff fines.
Is this some nightmarish dystopia?
No, this is contemporary Japan.
The Japanese government argues that it must regulate citizens’ lifestyles because it is paying their health costs. This highlights one of the greatly underappreciated dangers of “universal healthcare.” Any government that attempts to guarantee healthcare must also control its costs. The inevitable next step will be to seek to control citizens’ health and their behavior. Hence, Americans should beware that if we adopt universal healthcare, we also risk creating a “nanny state on steroids” antithetical to core American principles.
We’ve already had discussions here about the real dangers of socialized medicine - not just to the national health care system, but to the liberties of the people, who will cheerfully vote away those liberties to keep their “free” medical care. (cf. Social Security, American politics, third rail).
They’re going to try to foist Japanese/Euro-style socialized medicine on you, though, and sooner, rather than later. Don’t let them do it. We’ll keep updating you on their progress, but in the end, you’ll have to take action as well.
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Let’s see restrictions on smoking, a ban on transfats, proposals for a fat tax, restrictions on softdrinks in schools…. Looks like we’re closer than I’d like to a tyranny of the Health Police.
Almost all members of Congress would be affected by such laws as well. Of course, they’d exempt themselves. They always do.
And after that–people who get STDs?
No, Jim, that won’t happen. After all, we quickly exempted AIDS from the ancient STD fighting tool of contact tracing because it offended a “Government Approved Victim Group.”
And because the members of that group were being evicted, denied medical help, fired, and assaulted in the street due to their HIV status. But SDN doesn’t mind that, because he’s a
bigotgay-hater.Still seems to me that the solution to that doesn’t require throwing long-standing techniques of disease control to the wayside.
And that solution would have been…?
Remember, I was here in SF by 1983, which was essentially ground zero, and I remember what the panic really was like. So when you come up with your solution for that time, kindly have it conform in some way to, you know, actual reality rather than whackjob, gay-hating fantasies about what was going on.
No, Bill, what I am for is that any law made applies to everyone, equally.
Obviously you aren’t, you hypocritical closet statist.
To get back on topic SC and Alabama have mandated that state employees pay more per month($25 in SC) for health insurance if they smoke. Now SC state Sen. Greg Ryberg, RINO- Aiken has introduced legislation to apply that to “obese” workers as well. And the RINO Governor wants to raise the smoking surcharge to $40 a month. Where’s Doc Holiday when you need him?
If insurance were handled by the private market without interference, it would cost more to insure yourself if you were a smoker, or obese.
Yeah, and if your law results in some unequal minority being thrown out of housing, fired from jobs, beaten on the street, losing their insurance, and dying, well, that’s just fine with you. Because you’re a gay-hater.
And maybe I’m a hypocritical statist - but even so I’ll continue to oppose bringing back slavery, as well. Jim Crow laws “affected” everybody - whites couldn’t go to black schools, for instance. But blacks were affected just a bit more.