Posted on 01/08/2009 9:41:58 AM PST by billorites
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.
Other countries with universal healthcare are already restricting individual freedoms in the name of controlling health costs. For example, the British government has banned some television ads for eggs on the grounds that they were promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. This is a blatant infringement of egg sellers' rights to advertise their products.
In 2007, New Zealand banned Richie Trezise, a Welsh submarine cable specialist, from entering the country on the grounds that his obesity would "impose significant costs ... on New Zealand's health or special education services." Richie later lost weight and was allowed to immigrate, but his wife had trouble slimming and was kept home. Germany has mounted an aggressive anti-obesity campaign in workplaces and schools to promote dieting and exercise. Citizens who fail to cooperate are branded as "antisocial" for costing the government billions of euros in medical expenses.
Of course healthy diet and exercise are good. But these are issues of personal – not government – responsibility. So long as they don't harm others
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
to quote the hated Planned Parenthood:
Keep your laws off of my body
Eggs are a healthy food which have been ingested by mammals for tens of millions of years.
What about the people who maintain a “healthy” weight through the use of cigarettes or heroin?
Mass. has mandatory healthcare (Romneycare) whereby you are fined if you don’t have health insurance. And they just announced that all restaurants must tell customers how many calories are in each dish — it’s all for the War Against Obesity.
This is exactly what I have argued would/will happen with ‘universal’ health care to anyone who will listen. People think it will be some utopia where all their medical bills will just magically disappear. they can go to whatever doctor whenever they want for FREE! Wrong! Government pays the bill- government will make the rules and run your life. This includes forced medication, vaccination, diet control, smoking cessation, contraception and anything and everything else you can think of, all in the name of keeping you healthy and thus keeping down costs. The nightmare is almost too horrible to contemplate.
"3 Days of the Condor" line from Robert Redford's shack-up girl:
"Those photographs aren't like me, but I took them -- so they are like me."
Nanny state regulations and universal healthcare thus feed a vicious cycle of increasing government control over individuals. Both undermine individual responsibility and habituate citizens to ever-worsening erosions of their individual rights. Both promote dependence on government. Both undermine the virtues of independence and rationality. Both jeopardize the very foundations of a free society.
Everyone needs to read this article and preach it loud, all the time.
I am the same weight as college thirty years ago and my numbers are perfect, but if I ate the government approved diet, I’d gain a hundred pounds and die in less than a year.
They can have my bacon and eggs when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers.
With all due respect to the risks of a nanny state, quite real, this is Japan we’re talking about. Japan has a very heavy societal pressure component. Individualism is simply not valued like it is here. There is a Japanese saying: “The nail that sticks up gets pounded down.”
There may be risks as you say, but this is an apples to oranges argument. We are the most individualistic nation in the world... for now, anyway.
Got news for you — the same thing is happening now with companies. HR people regularly make notations on applications as to the applicant’s appearance.
Fat people boost insurance costs. Companies avoid them at all costs.
“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines”
“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”
According to the BMI indexhttp://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/ anyone over a 25 is overweight......I am a 25.6...have 7% body fat, run 36 miles a week, 4000 pushups a week, have a VERY healthy diet, yet I would be considered overweight....
you can bet that the figures for determining exactly who is overweight will be determined a reed thin,vegan government lackey .....
Perhaps you have not read or watched the news in the last year or so....
Just a reminder that that this nation just elected the most Liberal Senator as our next president and gave him substantial majorities in both houses of congress.
And both the new president and the congress is in favor of universal health care.
Governments are never able to run an efficient anything. That is because government bureaucracies are run for the benefit of the goverment workers not the people receiving the service they provide. That is logical all organizations are run for the benefit of those picking up the tab. If the goverment picks up the tab then it is run to benefit the goverment. So when (not if) we get universal health care it will be run to benefit goverment.. And that means it must greatly reduce services to the recipients. It has nothing to do with the American people. They just pay the governemt.. the goverment wil pay for the health care.
This is the inevitable result of socialized medicine. If you want the govt to pay for your healthcare, then you can’t get away from the govt wanting to control your habits.
Try denying them their antivirals and antibiotics for "cruising bare back".
HUH????????
Smokers tend to weigh less than non-smokers, and heroin addicts tend to weigh less than everyone. If the only standard here is “lack of obesity”, then those groups would be considered “healthier” than the pleasantly plump.
How does anyone (especially a government) determine that a food is really “healthy”? Spinach is “healthy”, but if you were locked in a room with nothing but spinach, you’d be dead within a month. Pizza is “junk”, but you could eat nothing but pizza every day of your life and live to be 100.
Pizza is actually a fairly nutritious food. It is comprised of items from all the food groups — grains (the crust), fruit (tomatoes are a fruit), vegetables (e.g. onions), dairy and protein (cheese and meat), and fat (olive oil). The herbs used to season pizza are also full of important vitamins and minerals.
Of course, we’re talking real pizza here, the kind made with thin crust and fresh ingredients. Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, stadium slices, and other forms of pseudo-pie are truly junk food.
I don’t know anyone who uses heroin so I can’t speak to that, but I sure as heck know a lot of “pleasantly plump” smokers.
I don’t want the government telling me what is “healthy” food, as you point out they don’t get it right.
BTW, I don’t consider pizza “junk.”
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