The ever-wonderful Boston Globe is parroting a new study from the Gub-ment of the Commonwealth indicating that in ten years, the number of "dangerously" overweight Mass citizens has risen 80%.
No need to post the link (though I have it). You've seen it all before, and I take it as the same old rehetoric. The key for me to consider here is why the state is involved in using tax money expropriated from citizens in order to study something that is a private affair. One's weight should not be the concern of government, should it... Yet we see studies like this all the time. Why? The answer offered is that "we all pay" for the mistakes of others who gain weight, because it effects medical bills.
Apart from the disagreements over the science of obesity, I wonder what others think... Realistically, we only pay the medical bills of others when the government supercedes our own moral prerogatives and forces us to pay into socialized medical programs like medicare and medicaid, and regulates private insurance companies with which we voluntarily associate and do business, forcing them to accept high-risk patients and to pay for procedures the politicians deam necessary.
Every time I see a report like this, I think about how we are being set up. Set up for more government regulations over our lives, in the forms of taxes on foods, requirements for insurance companies, and regulations on food companies and fast food restaurants. I also think about how nice it would be for politicians, instead of passing bills to tell others how to run their businesses, to start up their own insurance companies and offer sevices, leaving their neighbors alone.
When you see reports about "dangerously" overweight Americans, do your alarm bells begin to ring? And how are we supposed to define "dangerously" overweight, when even doctors all over the world can't agree?
-- Maxi
No need to post the link (though I have it). You've seen it all before, and I take it as the same old rehetoric. The key for me to consider here is why the state is involved in using tax money expropriated from citizens in order to study something that is a private affair. One's weight should not be the concern of government, should it... Yet we see studies like this all the time. Why? The answer offered is that "we all pay" for the mistakes of others who gain weight, because it effects medical bills.
Apart from the disagreements over the science of obesity, I wonder what others think... Realistically, we only pay the medical bills of others when the government supercedes our own moral prerogatives and forces us to pay into socialized medical programs like medicare and medicaid, and regulates private insurance companies with which we voluntarily associate and do business, forcing them to accept high-risk patients and to pay for procedures the politicians deam necessary.
Every time I see a report like this, I think about how we are being set up. Set up for more government regulations over our lives, in the forms of taxes on foods, requirements for insurance companies, and regulations on food companies and fast food restaurants. I also think about how nice it would be for politicians, instead of passing bills to tell others how to run their businesses, to start up their own insurance companies and offer sevices, leaving their neighbors alone.
When you see reports about "dangerously" overweight Americans, do your alarm bells begin to ring? And how are we supposed to define "dangerously" overweight, when even doctors all over the world can't agree?
-- Maxi
