Posted on 12/05/2009 9:34:32 AM PST by Still Thinking
Faced with an obesity epidemic, that has dramatic consequences for medical costs, pundits have proposed different solutions, ranging from excluding obesity from health insurance, government-run prevention campaigns, higher taxes on junk food, or higher premiums for fat people.
The possibility of greater government involvement in medicine with the passing of ObamaCare puts this debate in a new light. If the government decides who gets money for medical treatment, the question of whether fat people deserve medical treatment will become a political issue.
The question of who "deserves" treatment is only conceivable in a welfare state. In a free, capitalist society, people are able to allocate their wealth according to their judgment of the merit of their own and others health, including the degree to which they are culpable for their condition. However, there is no rational way to allocate property taken by force.
Does Jake, who became paralyzed because he liked extreme sports, or Kate, who has lung cancer because she is a smoker, or Mary, who has problems because has a tendency towards obesity which she does not try to control with diet or exercise, or Sue, who is dying from old age, and whose life might be slightly extended at tremendous cost deserve my money?
Hey, fags are our future!
Oh wait .................
They cannot deprive the obese from healthcare.
ACORN will loose all it’s employees!
If they can afford it, I don’t see why not.
I am solidly against the original premise that I am responsible, ultimately, for paying for these programs to subsidize behaviors born from the lack of personal responsibility. Include in that, a government bureaucracy that completely restricts and controls peoples lifestyle choices. A government bureaucracy will decide how one lives....and ultimately who will live.
Getting back to the point of the article:
"The monstrosity of the welfare state is that the more virtuous and productive a person is, the more of his life and values he is forced to sacrifice, and the more unproductive and needy he is, the more he is rewarded for it. Like all forms of statism, medical socialism punishes virtue and rewards vice."
Because we already have this in one form or another, doesn't make it right. I don't understand why reasonable, freedom loving people don't get this. I say this, you should have the freedom to live in a manner that suits you as long as you are willing to pay the consequences on your own. Too bad common sense, wise choices and personal responsibility isn't used to govern people's lives.
Now it's increasingly the government and the use of my confiscated "values" to pay because it's "the fair thing to do." Horse feathers!
I too, am disgusted that my tax dollars go to the treatment of lowlifes. I would rather keep those dollars and use them to help the particular lowlifes I come in contact with and then hold them accountable for what they do with that help. It takes more of my time, but I believe it is much more productive.
The Dems and like thinkers want to “help” these people with a payroll deduction and not invest any time in the community. Not only that, but they think it’s best to use your and my money to do their good deed.
They put our money where their mouth is, so to speak.
To turn the public trend of letting govt use our money to “help” the chronically dependent into true community action to better the lowlifes would require a REVIVAL! After the lowlifes refuse to take advantage of their last opportunity to turn their lives around, they then will have to resort to begging, and potentially die. I think this a better system than having bureaucrats decide that a motorcycle rider that broke his neck in a crash is not worth treating even though he paid into their insufficient system.
Getting rid of the current system that disgusts us is, IMHO, impossible. Stopping the advance of this crappy socialism is going to take one devil of a fight.
“Getting rid of the current system that disgusts us is, IMHO, impossible.”
well, it’s going to be bankrupt soon, so we’ll see how that affects it
Brilliant post. I am going to use this in my arguments with liberals.
Sadly, you and I will be bankrupt along with the disgusting system.
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