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Fat people who drive too fast without seatbelts and the national mandate.
I don't want to be in the pool with people who disregard simple reason and prudent behavior in their lifestyle choices. People can give themselves diabetes. People ruin their livers. People smoke.
How can that be handled? I'm against any mandate. I'm sure two thirds of the country is sufficient to negotiate discounts on X-Rays. Right? Makes sense, doesn't it? 200,000,000 people?
Thats almost as many as currently have insurance. If some of the insurance companies were to close for some reason, like redundancy, lack of competition, or a national health insurance company (Franny Med) doing what they do better, with lower premiums, lower overhead and fewer options to deny coverage or care, or if people were to become unemployed for some reason, like the RNC running roughshod over the USA for the past decade, ...
But fatness comes from excessive caloric intake relative to the body's metabolism of those calories. Alcoholism doesn't happen at dinner one night. These are societal ills, but I can't accept responsibility or the bill for it.
How can that be handled? I'm against any mandate. I'm sure two thirds of the country is sufficient to negotiate discounts on X-Rays. Right? Makes sense, doesn't it? 200,000,000 people?
Thats almost as many as currently have insurance. If some of the insurance companies were to close for some reason, like redundancy, lack of competition, or a national health insurance company (Franny Med) doing what they do better, with lower premiums, lower overhead and fewer options to deny coverage or care, or if people were to become unemployed for some reason, like the RNC running roughshod over the USA for the past decade, ...
But fatness comes from excessive caloric intake relative to the body's metabolism of those calories. Alcoholism doesn't happen at dinner one night. These are societal ills, but I can't accept responsibility or the bill for it.
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Obesity, alcoholism and affective disorders (and many more) have common roots. I have explained elsewhere why but did not seem to generate any interest from the TPM community so I won't repeat myself.
All of these disorders are products of psychological and biochemical problems that drive each other, and medical treatment is warranted and should be covered by a national health plan.
August 20, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can't pick and choose what maledies are going to be covered. Every afliction has some component of personal choice so where does the buck finally stop? If you catch the swine flu on the subway is that because you were foolish to use public transport? What about cancer caused by working in a high risk job?
Further, obesity and alchohalism have genetic and cultural roots that are out of individual control.
A more productive way of looking at health problems can be seen in countries with single payer systems. When the cost of health care becomes the problem of government measures like taxing tobaco and high potency liquor become obvious solutions. Educational and preventive programs are cheaper than paying for treatments of long term damage. Regulating what kind of garbage foods can be marketed to kids as well as how kids are marketed to becomes seen as more important than the freedom of speech for Mickey-D's.
No doubt much of the above is just what many people will wail against as stepping on their personal freedom but then heroin adicts rarely go into detox without a fight. The truth is that public health affects everybody and one person's freedom is another persons abuse. I can give up cheap vodka for a healtier populace and incidentally less drunks on the road. It is time to admit that simpistic ideas are what has dug us in this hole and get ready to some heavy lifting to get out or at least get things under some semblance of control.
August 21, 2009 5:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I must add that the worst problem with America's health care system is the uncertainty. When you go to the doctor or hospital the first concern is payment. That issue clouds the judgement of all parties including the patient (can I afford to go for treatment?), doctors, administrative staff...
When you are sick you need care right away.
I'm thinking of a "National Lampoon" poster from the 1970s. It showed a WWI doughboy holding a bloody wound and desperately reaching out to a woman in Florance Nightengale uniform with a blue cross on the chest. She holds a clipboard and pen and coldly asks for his account number. The age of that parody shows that this problem is not new and it is way past due for being addressed.
August 21, 2009 5:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I recommend your comments, fpie.
I do not recommend this blog.
August 21, 2009 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are common roots to these maladies, but I'm convinced that most human behavior is 90% reflex and habit. These habits come from homes, which are run by parents, also individuals who can and often do enjoy a cheeseburger among their diverse menu options, a McDonalds Cherry Pie or a vodka martini. But a steady diet of crap is harmful, is a lifestyle, and to claim all lifestyles are biochemically caused is nonsense.
Maybe it's genetic too, but not all of it. If there were no McDonald's, there would be no Big Macs and no Big Mac addicts.
August 21, 2009 9:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Has it entered into anyone's consciousness that the reason so many in America are fat is because all they can afford to buy in the way of food is McDonalds three times a day? Not to mention, our cities are fairly designed to ensure that one need not step out of the car for very long. Then add to that the amount of stress people here cope with as compared to other industrialized countries. Its the perfect recipe for a super-sized nation. We have a lot of ills to correct before we start throwing the hefty overboard.
P.S. Am not defending because I am amongst them, so don't even think about going there... but man am I disgusted with this post!
August 21, 2009 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes.
August 24, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, please, just go out and buy yourself a bubble - live in it for the rest of your life. That's the most ridiculous tripe I've ever heard... only in America would someone say something so utterly stupid and selfish:
"But fatness comes from excessive caloric intake relative to the body's metabolism of those calories. Alcoholism doesn't happen at dinner one night. These are societal ills, but I can't accept responsibility or the bill for it."
August 21, 2009 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bullshit. We all have choices to make, and some pick the salad sometimes. Do you wear a seatbelt? I hope so, because people get seriously broken up when they roll a car, normally by accident.
I don't understand why it's ridiculous to mention the people who wreck their bodies by attrition when we're preparing to hitch everybody to a giant system. I'm careful mostly. I exercise frequently. I keep my heart and lungs in mind.
I'm also broke. See, people can do situps, pushups, jumping jacks to keep blood circulating without a fancy gym membership or a special yoga mat. And it can happen in a city, where many people jog, walk to work.
There's a difference between mortality, against which we should all seek insurance, and unhealthy lifestyle. One aspect of the mandate frees the lazy and imprudent from responsibility for their demise.
Nobody wants the government to teach people how to rear children, which is the lifestyle component in public health or unfitness.
August 24, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
It bothers me that so many (wow-two) people are so permissive about this. Who fails to understand that the gagging cough after you light that cigarette means it's bad for you?
Will we cover emphysema treatments for smokers?
If they go back to smoking, do we cut them off or schedule their next catastrophic care session?
Head trauma with no seatbelt?
This is science. Medicine is scientific. It supposedly treats ailments by alleviating their causes. If the etiology of the disease is 'that guy's habits', then it can't be treated as medicine.
Insurance against a malady we know we're going to get because we cause it is insurance fraud.
Of course, if we raise psychiatry to the level of medicine, we can start forcibly medicating people for being lazy. Is that what you want?
August 24, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink