Posted on 02/23/2011 6:41:32 PM PST by Eric Blair 2084
Sen. Joe Negron wants fat Floridians and smokers to get healthy or else.
Included in Negron’s revamp of the state-federal Medicaid program – which Negron will release tomorrow – is a component aimed at what senators are calling “personal responsibility.”
Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who helped craft Negron’s bill, said Medicaid patients have to take control of their health care just as he had to do when his doctor told him to lose weight.
“We’re saying that an individual who’s been diagnosed as morbidly obese needs to be on a medically-directed program of weight loss to manage that health care problem that could turn into an increased taxpayer liability. The same thing with smokers,” Gaetz said.
The bill would require smokers and alcoholics and drug addicts to get treatment, Gaetz said.
Negron said his bill would include incentives for Medicaid patients to lose weight, quit smoking and stop drinking but did not give details about what they would be.
If they don’t get thinner and put down the smokes, Negron said their coverage could be cut off.
(Excerpt) Read more at postonpolitics.com ...
Taxing someone is a little different than government spending for welfare
This is happening in the private sector too, but not as ‘in your face’. Where I work, unless you want to pay ALOT MORE for health insurance, you have to submit to a physical exam. If any abnormalities are found, you have to go to a doctor, and see a company chosen nurse who acts as your “life coach”. Smoking immediately puts you into the class of employee that has an ‘abnormality’.
Next it will be helmets for all passengers in a vehicle, with a regulated maximum 30 mph speed limit. Think of the lives that would be saved with this law!
Quitters, Inc. (Stephen King)
How about simply legalizing drugs and dumping Medicaid. Obamaocare will make Medicaid more expensive, as I understand it.
I think you mean Medicaid (welfare).
The fag’s are on ssi.
I'm sure they do the same for homosexuals and transgenders, right? RIGHT???
I want YOU to get outta my FACE!
(Not you, EB. The gummint.)
Isn’t funny how many anti-smoking Nazis are fat as hogs? I’ve said it a million times: better to be a thin smoker, than a fat non-smoker. Fat people don’t have a 5-8 dollar tax on what they eat, yet they overload the medical system with their diabetes and heart disease. Sad to say, but smokers actually “pay” for their diseases many times over.
I want you (the gummint) to eat my meat.
What makes anyone think reductions in entitlement costs will ever be passed along to the tax payers? Govt is used to the money and it will never be returned in the form of lower taxes.
Most sensible and cut back on that welfare crap.
This is a closer call than I initially thought. I don’t believe government has any business telling people to lose weight or not to smoke, but as a condition for Medicaid, I am willing to listen to the arguments from both sides. Anything that might reduce the number of freeloaders I tend to support.
Just the start. If it works for Medicaid then it will probably work for Obamacare. Don’t believe it, ask about the National Healthcare System in the late great Britain!
The simple answer is you lose your freedom when gubmint and taxpayers are paying for your healthcare.
Their house, their money, their rules. It’s like being a child forever.
I want YOU (gummint) to sh*t in your boot and eat it.
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