Healthcare on the back of a napkinFollow

The genes themselves do not adjust, that's not how evolution works. The only way this will change is if everyone in the family dies off except for the naturally skinny ones. Or marrying outside the family, but I think that's a given and should be happening anyway.

In related news, my Congresscritter just called me (recorded) to say my phone'll ring tomorrow at 7pm for a health care tele-town hall meeting. I assume this is from me having written to her in the past.

Because you are both people and you both deserve medical treatment. This isn't that hard. You can't just suddenly give up your worth as a human being by making some bad choices about being fat, and you are not more worthy of having your life saved because you are not fat, regardless of whether or not the person is fat by choice. The punishment for leading an unhealthy lifestyle is being fat and dying early due to persistent medical problems, and that punishment is already built into the lifestyle of being sedentary; the evil of being fat and unhealthy is not something proportional with the punishment of refusing to @#%^ing treat you and letting you die or go bankrupt.

We don't flay people alive for snatching a purse. Why do you think it's any more okay to ruin someone's life (an already unhealthy life) for eating too much grease?

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At the risk of shattering your conception, I don't use this as an excuse, and while you may not be talking to me particularly, I want to preemptively address this. I could not care less if someone leads an unhealthy lifestyle or is fat by genes. It doesn't make a bit of difference in how much care they deserve simply by being a human being.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2009 7:06pm by Pensive

Nah, Canadians are damn near as fat as Americans and we're still spending less per capita than the US is.

I don't. And I think you're missing why I hold the position I hold. Let me put it another way, why should I pay to provide additional health costs incurred by someone who is actively doing things which increase said costs? It's like if you and I went to a restaurant and agreed to split the tab, and you order a 15 dollar meal, and I order a 40 dollar meal. You might be a bit miffed, right?

Now. Let's follow the progression. If you and I decide to go out to eat again, you might insist that we have separate checks, right? Or. If we decide to split the cost, wouldn't you insist that we both eat similarly priced meals? Those are two rational solutions to the problem.

The first is the conservative approach. Let each person choose what meal they want, and pay for it.

The second is the liberal approach. Everyone shares the cost, but ultimately we have to set rules on how much each can have so that no one's screwed.

Setting aside issues of ability to pay at all, the result of the second choice is a reduction of the freedom of the individual. If we agreed to separate checks, either one of us could chose to have the expensive meal if we wanted to. By agreeing to share the costs, we inevitably must also restrict the choice we both have when selecting our meal. Even if one day I look at a menu and see something I really want to eat, if it's outside our agreed upon price limit, I can't buy it.


The concern is not just about the costs to us today, but how that cost inequity will affect things down the line. In a purely "pay as you go" health system, I don't care about what my neighbor eats or how much he exercises. But if I have to pay for his care, suddenly I do care, right? I can't artificially reduce his costs, but I *can* try to change his behavior. I can support laws which control his behavior. To what degree? I don't know. But this does become a potential issue here. And it's a common issue with a lot of liberal policies. By making us all shared payers into something, we all become interested parties in the activities of those around us. That puts us in the position of supporting legislation designed to pressure or force people to change their habits.


If someone wants to smoke, by all means let them. But if I have to pay for that persons health care, I might be much more amenable to legislation designed to stop people from smoking. And maybe I decide that mandatory exercise is a great idea. Heck. Let's ticket people for being too fat and send them to "fat prison", where they'll be forced to eat healthy food and work out regularly. And lets find any other vices we don't like and punish them as well...


Slippery slope? Sure. But how about we *not* put ourselves in a position to even allow such a thing to happen.



Of course you care. You care that they receive medical care, right? Why? Is it the physical act of visiting a room with a doctor and having the doctor do something? Or is it the health benefits derived by this? Is it the extension of life? Is it the infant mortality rates? Is it the longevity of the average person? Aren't those really the things you care about? It's not about receiving the care, but about receiving the things the care gives them: Longer life, greater health, more happiness, etc...


Why stop at providing medical care after they've made themselves sick? Why not provide them preventative care? If you could make someone not eat too much in the first place, wouldn't that be better care than waiting until they are obese and then attempting to treat their diabetes, bad heart, poor circulation, and other related issues? Wouldn't you be helping them even more if you just enforced a good diet on them in the first place?


See. I don't see any reason why you would support one, but not the other. The idea that you would have no respect for the individuals efforts to provide for himself when it comes to someone paying for their own care with their own money, but you'd magically respect someones efforts to provide for himself when it comes to allowing him to eat himself into illness seem unlikely. Wouldn't your same sense of morality require you to step in and stop him from doing this?


And even if *you* would not do this, what about the next generation of liberals? Can you be sure they wont take that next logical step? If it's about maximizing the amount of health everyone has, wouldn't it make sense to prevent illness by regulating behavior? I think so...


And this is what we mean when we talk about big government, and loss of freedoms related from such. It's not entirely about the money (although that's a reduction of liberty as well). It's about the control gained over those who are recipients of the care. I've often talked about who people living on welfare are the least free of all citizens outside of prison populations. The government can impose restrictions on where they can live, who they can live with, what they can buy (what are those food coupon thingies called?), etc. The people who's incomes are seized to pay for said services are impacted to some degree. But it's the people who receive the services who ultimately come under the greatest amount of government control.

For me, it's about maximizing freedom. If that means that we all accept the risks that life brings us, then that's a cost we should be willing to pay. If I get sick and can't afford care, then that's my own misfortune. I should not require others to pay for me. To me, that's selfish and in the process places restrictions on us all that should not be there in the first place.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2009 6:59pm by gbaji

I'm not confused at all. This is exactly what I was talking about. What's the best way to go about "fixing his fatitude"? My point is that you don't want to provide medical care for the sake of providing medical care, but because it'll "fix" the persons health problems. It's ends oriented.



I didn't say you'd refuse treatment. I said that the same moral compass which pushes you to provide him with medical care in the first place, will also push you to try to find some way to change his behavior so that he's not fat in the first place. Cause it's the best way to make him not suffer the health problems associated with being fat, right?



Yes, it would. You just said it would. You said you would "admonish and bribe him to change his ways". What exactly would that entail Pensive? Would you support sending people with chronic obesity to "fat farms"? Would you support school programs which detected kids who were overweight and put them into special education programs to help them avoid over eating? What if they refused? Would it be ok to make it mandatory? After all, you owe them their good health, right? It's what is motivating you here. It's all for their best interest, right?




But wouldn't helping someone not be fat enhance their worth? Wouldn't it "enable the individual to prosper"? I'm curious what would motivate you to oppose regulating a fat persons behavior to make them not be fat anymore? You seem to have no problem at all imposing restrictions on people in order to produce a better outcome for everyone, so I'm not sure why you'd suddenly balk at this.


See. I hypothesized that your moral position would require you to impose such regulations. And you certainly seem to be supporting said hypothesis quite well...



I'm sorry, but does you definition of freedom include having a government tell you what you must do? Cause mine doesn't. It's about the concept, not how you might be able to use the word in a sentence. Just because I can "free someone from being fat" by forcing them to complete fat-camp training, doesn't mean that by doing so I'm actually increasing their freedom.


In fact, it's the exact opposite. And while you're "free" to insist that your use of the word in this situation is "freedom", it's certainly not what anyone involved in the concepts meant when they placed such great value on them while debating early concepts of liberal societies, much less what the founding fathers of the US meant when they discussed the same.

If you want to argue that the freedoms they held dear are really less important than this newer meaning of the word, by all means argue away. But let's not pretend that you're not changing the meaning. That's just dishonest...

Edited, Sep 2nd 2009 7:43pm by gbaji