From Steve Chapman's article, as quoted by the Goddess (No plagiarist I! Biden says it's no big deal, but I disagree!):

The nice thing about eating is that the person who makes good or bad choices is the one who reaps the reward or penalty. If I scarf a cheesecake, you don't gain weight. And if I decide that consigning myself to the Big and Tall Store is not such a bad option, it's not your place to stop me from doing so.

Nice idea, but not wholly true. A person's personal freedom is also our burden in taxes and insurance premiums. It costs oodles and oodles of money to care for a patient with lung cancer or emphysema...and they may end up dying anyway.

So, "It's my right to smoke!" isn't entirely true. We still have to pay for your healthcare, even if you're considerate enough to take your habit outside and away from everyone else.

Well, that's just an argument for actively making people be responsible for all consequences of their actions (i.e. we remove them from the public tit, and let them fend for themselves, as it should be)

And the lawmakers (or morons, to normal people), should spend their efforts getting rid of the impediments to personal responsibility instead of making some new, essentially utterly useless, rule about someone else's behaviour.

See, the thing is, whether we're still paying for it or not (and we should *not* be), these kind of laws don't actually change the behaviour of the targeted group of people. They're going to find a way to do (eat, smoke, fuck, etc.) whatever they want, anyway. It's just useless posturing, and to think otherwise is naive in the extreme.

Outlaw Happy Meals, and they'll go to something else. You're not going to convince them to buy broccoli, just because someone passed a 'hey look, ma, I'm doing something' law.

No matter how hard you want to try, you cannot, fundamentally, and in the long term, protect people from themselves. As we say in the engineering arena, no matter how hard you try to make something idiot proof, the universe just creates a more dedicated idiot.

As moderatly heartless as it may seem, letting these people suffer consequences of their actions, without the rest of us to bail them out, is better for everyone in the long run.

"Nice idea, but not wholly true. A person's personal freedom is also our burden in taxes and insurance premiums."

And this in a nutshell is one of my biggest problems with increasing govt. involvement in health care. People already feel it their business to tell others how to live when all they share is a common insurance pool. Once you add in government spending, suddenly it's a free for all in coercion by legislation.

(By many calculations smokers are cheaper because they die off younger, sparing the costs of end of life treatment of the aged that are the dominant health care expenses.)

Yes, a fattie does you no harm until you get on the airplane, and he wordlessly "annexes half your seat like he's Germany and you're Poland," as Amy puts it.

But, since I don't know shiite about dieting, and most people can handle Happy Meals just fine, IMO, I'm not willing to control what people eat.

Patrick, please explain how unhealthy people, who die at a younger age, are more of a financial burden to us than healthy people who live longer and have the inevitable medical costs of old age? My grandma, for example, is 92 years old. She has always been the picture of healthy living - no smoking, drinking, never a pound overweight. She may very well live to 100, and that's great, certainly a good reason to avoid unhealthy habits. But for at least the last 10 years, she has been hospitalized many times, has doctor's appointments weekly, plus a visiting nurse to help her with everday tasks (and to keep her out of a nursing home, which would be a truckload of money). All of this is funded by her Medicare. So why would it be so much more expensive if she had emphysema and only lived to 75? By the way, this is a serious question, I'm not trying to prove you wrong.

Just more of why I am not a people person.

Karen, there's a couple of things I can see. Your grandmother, even for her healthy lifestyle, is the exception. Most people don't live to 80, much less 92. Also, you mentioned that she is covered by Medicaire (government insurance). Someone who dies of emphesyma before Medicaire kicks in would be a burden on the insurance that the rest of us have to buy.

My grandma is 89 and what I'd consider to be quite healthy. She has never been hospitalized with the exception of a knee replacement surgery 10 years ago. She rarely gets sick. She travels, goes fishing all summer, and manages to care for her 2 acre property without outside help.

Now here is my concern with your mother being "healthy." why does she have to have weekly doctor appointments, be hospitalized multiple times a year, and require visiting nurses to help with normal activities of daily living? Those are all indications of someone being quite sick and debilitated regardless of age.

There are any number of things that can result in excess medical bills. Overeating is one. You can also get injured riding a bicycle. Traveling to foreign countries. Living in Los Angeles or New York might be actuarially less healthy than living out in the country. (or maybe more healthy. I'm not a scientist.) We all do things where we exchange a certain amount of health risk for fun, fulfillment, or some other form of satisfaction. So unless you want to require by law that we all live in sealed matrix pods, let them eat cake.

However, labeling laws seem reasonable. Up to a point.

Actually it depends on what kills you. The optimal situation is someone who croaks right around retirement. No long wasting illness but just drops dead. MCI, stroke, MVA etc. So we should all start sky diving and race car driving around retirement, also supper heavy drinking and crystal meth. The ideal financial (not moral or ethical) solution is something along the lines of Logans Run. Dead before becoming a burden.

As far as government regulating health habits. Well that might work IF we had incontrovertible proof of what healthy was and no US agriculture lobby groups. All we know for sure is that a life of high fat, high carb, high salt AND no excersise kills young. Usually in a sad messy way. The other approaches have mixed results.

The simple truth is there will be EOL care for many of us. Sooner, later as long as you are not one of the fortunate few who just drop dead one day. Once you start regulating good judgment you pop open a big fat can o shit.

BunnyGirl, my grandma had some kind of brain tumor. I don't think it was actually cancer, and she got through it well. But ever since then, she has had trouble with losing her balance and falling. Maybe her appointments are not weekly, but my mother sure seems to spend a lot of time taking my grandma to the doctor. So she's not really in perfect health (like your grandma) but she without a doubt led a very healthy lifestyle.

I think my point is this: who are the people who die before needing lots and lots of expensive medical care? Maybe the rare person who has a quick heart attack or car accident. So whether a person is 50 or 80, chances are that their last couple of years of life will be full of medical care.

"Someone who dies of emphesyma before Medicaire kicks in would be a burden on the insurance that the rest of us have to buy." OK, now I'm really confused. Isn't Medicare what we are talking about? Our taxes pay for it. Or are you talking about Obamacare? I didn't think that actually has happened yet.

That makes sense then. My dad (66) had balance issues for several months and come to find out that the ladt time he broke his nose (he's a logger) it knocked something out if alignment. They adjusted it but was fine after that. In the meantime he had several MRIs and CTs because they thought it was a brain issue.

My other grandma lived until her late 89s but had a lot if health issues related to the same autoimmune clotting disorder I have (which doctors didn't know existed until sometimd in the 1980s). Before she was diagnosed she had a major stroke in her 40s that left her partially paralyzed on one side (she could still shuffle to walj but had no use of her left arm). She was diagnosed after having two more smaller strokes. She eventually opted to move into assisted living in her 70s because it was getting too hard to take care of herself and her house completely. It's a shame they didn't know the disorder existed earlier or her strokes likely could have been avoided by taking a daily baby aspirin and adding in Lovenox for surgeries and pregnancies. She did have major medical bills from her issues but she was fortunate enough to have insurance through her husband's retirement package as well as Medicare. I'm hoping to be fortunate enough to avoid the same problems she had with the clotting disorder since to this point it's my only health issue and I treat it with aspirin (plus Lovenox now that I'm pregnant) and they run blood work on me every three months to see that everything is okay.

Last day. Capricorn 15's. Year of the city - 2274. Carousel begins.

Capricorn 15's. Born 2244. Enter the Carousel. This is the time of renewal.

Be strong and you will be renewed. Identify.

I really don't worry about Medicare -- like Social Security -- it will most likely be gone by the time I get there.

The thing is that you can't take SS w/o taking Medicare, (and vice-versa).

There is nothing wrong with pooled health care insurance. Its when the market isn't allowed to charge the prices for the pool. (i.e. "pre-existing" conditions, majority female pool and breast cancer, majority male pool and prostate cancer, the SOBs are majority fat so higher premiums, etc.)

The other thing someone pointed out -- when you pay you are more likely to pay attention. As he/she said (paraphrase) "The price of lipo, lasik, and other cosmetic procedures has dropped." The reason is that the consumer is involved in the "worth" of the procedure.

If I am carried into a hospital totally insured I can be nailed for $250 as a totally insured patient. The person uninsured could be nailed for $250K for the same thing by "Customary Services".

I would argue both sides. But it still doesn't justify the government taking over 1/6 or 16.6% of the economy is unsustainable.

luj -
there is no sanctuary.

I am more than machine. More than man. More than a fusion of the two. Don't you agree? Wait for the winds. Then my birds sing. And the deep grottos whisper my name. Box... Box... Box...