Perils of public healthcare, ambiguous as a brick to the head
CDC Chief: Soda Tax Could Combat Obesity
Tough love for fat people: Tax their food to pay for healthcare
Don't waste your breath badgering your "representative" as if he gives a shit about what you think. Some form of public healthcare is a foregone conclusion, and like Social Security, it will rapidly become an ingrained irrevocable entitlement. We've long passed the point of no return and have arrived at the final stage with the wolves (politicians, pharma, AMA) crowding over the carcass of liberty to divvy the scraps. Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence that the maintenance of private elements will endure the way Obama promises it will. I'm running on the assumption - and I think it's a good one - that most people in the US will have government-sponsored base coverage within a decade or so, with optional perks and extended coverage available privately as is the case in France. Whether this reality comes to fruition de jure of de facto (private insurance crowded out) is irrelevant.
So get ready for the new rules: if your fat broke ass is going to the doctor on my dime, it's your patriotic duty to suck it up and have a salad. I hope the CDC installs hydraulic jacks under your bed to catapult you vertical at 5 AM on Saturday mornings, with a camera in the living room to make sure you're jumping jack. Sin tax on soda is just the beginning; once this snowball starts rolling down hill, micromanagement of aspects of your diet and activity regimen is only a few economic crises away. The intermediary stage before balls to the wall command but after the junkfood taxes will be nationwide bans. Trans fat comes to mind immediately. I expect soda and candy machines to go the way of the cigarette machine. Speaking of which, everything that has been done to cigarettes (restricting ease of access, when and where they can be purchased and by whom, etc.) is a good predictor for what is coming to bacon cheeseburgers. Second-hand smoke is so 1998; the 21st century equivalent will be the burden your own poor decisions places on your fellow man's wallet instead of his lungs, and unlike the smoke it can be quantified and aggregated.
This will be bittersweet for libertarians. Perhaps people need to feel the wrath of their own short-sightedness, gullibility or complacency in order to learn from it, but I'll be pretty TO'd when the hydraulic jack man comes knocking on my door.
Tough love for fat people: Tax their food to pay for healthcare
Don't waste your breath badgering your "representative" as if he gives a shit about what you think. Some form of public healthcare is a foregone conclusion, and like Social Security, it will rapidly become an ingrained irrevocable entitlement. We've long passed the point of no return and have arrived at the final stage with the wolves (politicians, pharma, AMA) crowding over the carcass of liberty to divvy the scraps. Frankly, I don't have a lot of confidence that the maintenance of private elements will endure the way Obama promises it will. I'm running on the assumption - and I think it's a good one - that most people in the US will have government-sponsored base coverage within a decade or so, with optional perks and extended coverage available privately as is the case in France. Whether this reality comes to fruition de jure of de facto (private insurance crowded out) is irrelevant.
So get ready for the new rules: if your fat broke ass is going to the doctor on my dime, it's your patriotic duty to suck it up and have a salad. I hope the CDC installs hydraulic jacks under your bed to catapult you vertical at 5 AM on Saturday mornings, with a camera in the living room to make sure you're jumping jack. Sin tax on soda is just the beginning; once this snowball starts rolling down hill, micromanagement of aspects of your diet and activity regimen is only a few economic crises away. The intermediary stage before balls to the wall command but after the junkfood taxes will be nationwide bans. Trans fat comes to mind immediately. I expect soda and candy machines to go the way of the cigarette machine. Speaking of which, everything that has been done to cigarettes (restricting ease of access, when and where they can be purchased and by whom, etc.) is a good predictor for what is coming to bacon cheeseburgers. Second-hand smoke is so 1998; the 21st century equivalent will be the burden your own poor decisions places on your fellow man's wallet instead of his lungs, and unlike the smoke it can be quantified and aggregated.
This will be bittersweet for libertarians. Perhaps people need to feel the wrath of their own short-sightedness, gullibility or complacency in order to learn from it, but I'll be pretty TO'd when the hydraulic jack man comes knocking on my door.