It's official: The totalitarian state is here

[moda0306]

PS,

Yeah I didn't mean to put words in your mouth.  You are very right.  I am moreso trying to prove a point than anything.  Even the most basic forms of government, no matter how infantecimile, involve coercion.  I don't mean to give some lefty preach about the evils of the draft or slavery, just to put our current concerns in perspective.

Bureaucracy exists anytime you put more than a few people in charge of working together to complete a task on a budget.  I've dealt with it as much with ginormocorps as with government.  I think most economic conditions make most products or services most effectively and efficiently provided by the private sector.  Healthcare is one of those grey areas where there are market failures galore but still there are areas where the private sector makes huge gaines under the profit-motive model.  I just don't think using terms like "totalitarian" get us anywhere on the utilitarian front.

[Benko]

"eating unhealthy food".....
Can you provide us with a definitive list of which foods are unhealthy?

I don't need to.  You don't need me to tell you that trans fatty acids, and sugar frosted flakes/crispy creme donuts are bad for you.  If the general population just stopped doing the grossly unhealthy stuff they could greatly improve their health.

And there are vast areas of diet that almost everyone agrees on (see my post on diet). 

NOT that I am in favor of the gov't mandating such.

[notsheigetz]

Given what limited knowledge I have at this present time I would surely NOT acknowledge that there is any such thing as a "perfect health diet" as alluded to by the link in your post.

Might wanna check it out before you dismiss it. But even if you don't believe in a definite "perfect health diet" (which is totally legitimate, since we all have a slightly different biochemical make-up), you must surely admit that one's diet has an effect on one's health, right? You don't have to believe in a certain set of ideal foods to acknowledge that constantly shoveling your face full of soda, onion rings, and M&Ms will make you obese.

That's what we're discussing here: whether a health insurance company should have the right to charge you more for eating crap like the aforementioned food-like substances, on the justification that it will negatively affect your health and cause you to file more claims. I think they should, and if a part of Obamacare loosens the chains previously placed on them and allows them the freedom to do so, I welcome it.

This would ironically represent a diminution of the totalitarian state, not evidence of its further encroachment.

I have absolutely no idea where it would come from but I suspect that if I was deaf, dumb, and blind I might naturally come to the conclusion that a diet of soda, onion rings, and M&MS would be unhealthy though maybe not. I might very well hear anecdotal evidence of someone who lived to be 100 on that diet and conclude that it was not such a bad idea after all. I'd be really pissed if someone told me I had to quit.

I think it MIGHT be fairly well established that obesity is the cause of our recent health care "crisis" and an "epidemic" but unfortunately I have to weigh this against the fact that people are living longer than ever before (and this is ALSO now a crisis for Social Security). Go figure.

Are we really discussing whether a private insurance company can charge us more for the "crap" we eat? Do you know of any insurance that keeps track of the "crap" we eat?

Only one entity is capable of that kind of micro-monitoring in our lives. Do you want to go there?

[notsheigetz]

I don't need to.  You don't need me to tell you that trans fatty acids, and sugar frosted flakes/crispy creme donuts are bad for you.  If the general population just stopped doing the grossly unhealthy stuff they could greatly improve their health.

And there are vast areas of diet that almost everyone agrees on (see my post on diet). 

NOT that I am in favor of the gov't mandating such.

I don't believe you when you make a blanket statement that frosted flakes and crispy creme donuts are bad for you - like they contain poison or something. In some circumstances I think they would be very good for you and I could probably list those if you wanted me to (and you can probably think of them yourself).  I would believe you if you were telling me that the average person shouldn't eat them all the time. I think I learned something like that from my mother. Where she got it from I really don't know but I suspect it wasn't the government though I could be wrong.

We have an epidemic of obesity and poor nutrition.

We are living longer than ever before.

How do you reconcile those two conflicting statements?

[MediumTex]

We have an epidemic of obesity and poor nutrition.

We are living longer than ever before.

How do you reconcile those two conflicting statements?

When you back out dramatic reductions in infant and childhood mortality, plus fewer fatal industrial-related accidents because there are fewer of us working on farms and in factories, life expectancy hasn't increased much (if at all) in decades.

It is probably true that modern medical science can keep an unhealthy person alive an extra  6-12 months in many cases compared to the time before modern drugs and treatment existed, but I think that it is a myth that adult life expectancies have been increasing as a result of improvements in medicine.

I believe that the reason life expectancy hasn't increased in recent decades is because we have seen dramatic improvements in medicine met with a dramatic deterioration in the quality our our diets and our levels of physical activity.  When you look at it from that perspective, it makes perfect sense that we aren't all living to our 90s.  It surprises me that many people live as long as they do with such poor diets and complete lack of physical activity.

[MomTo2Boys]

I look at the regimented societies of North Korea and Communist China under Mao and ask myself could it happen here in freedom loving America?

Here, let me help you out with that question.

The answer is NO.

There are a zillion jillion gazillion uncrossable light years in between health care legislation steps in the US (regardless of how anyone feels about them - or even any other legislative steps that might happen in the US that might be seen to be distasteful) and being part of a Mao-like or North-Korea-like society.

Mmmkay, now. Everyone carry on. Just had to throw that out there. The answer is NO. NO, NO, NO.

[Greg]

PS is right, though. One person's liberty is another person's coercion.

I might rephrase this as "Every type of coercion enrages some, while merely irritating others." But that doesn't eliminate the fact that's all coercion, as indeed you said.

You're clearly extremely agitated by the possibility of a government forcing you to murder strangers, moda, while not really caring much about the government preventing notsheigetz from cutting down his tree or me building my house without having to ask permission from and kowtow to 500 bureaucrats. That's fine; we're all different, and we have different preferences and value scales. But I think it's important to keep in mind that it's all coercion, and retain empathy for people who are miffed by a type of coercion that you don't really mind so much.

PointedStick,

I don't like all of the regulations at all either with housing. The only reason I see it as worthwhile is that people want to buy standardized things and they might not want to take a chance on buying a home if it doesn't have any codes it has been set to. You could always build a home and live in it all your lives, but what happens if you ever want to sell it? Is it possible? Would someone buy it without proper regulatory hurdles to jump through?

It's reasons like that they make me think it'd be great to reduce the regulations but you might not be able to sell it without the regulations to someone else.

Perhaps the best middle ground would be if you would want to take the risk, you can design the house yourself as long as it doesn't negatively affect others. If you want to sell it though, someone might want it brought up to current codes before they would consider buying it. That's why I would wanna look for someone who is willing to pay less and take the risk that I did my job correctly of wiring up the house, etc. so that I don't need to go through the costly procedure of regulation my house to make it sellable to others.

[RuralEngineer]

One person's liberty is another person's coercion.

What?  Liberty is liberty.  True liberty is not coercion and doesn't require anyone else to subsidize or otherwise bend to your worldview.  That's why there's so little true liberty to be found in socialist systems.  They rely on 100% inclusion with no opt out.  It's why Obamacare would have gone down in flames if the mandate had been ruled unconstitutional.  Either we all pay in or you can't have the goodies like no excluding preexisting conditions.

Having said this, I agree that all government functions or powers I'm familiar with are in fact coercion.  This is why liberty is the casualty of an expanding government.  It's the food that fuels governmental growth.

[MachineGhost]

Can you provide us with a definitive list of which foods are unhealthy?

There is no such thing as unhealthy food per se, only unhealthy times to eat food that renders it unhealthy to the body.

Though I'll make an exception for poisons, trans-fats and GMO's.  Those are truly artificial foodstuffs.  But when you want a doughnut, are you gonna quibble over the <=.5 grams of trans-fats per serving?

[MachineGhost]

You're clearly extremely agitated by the possibility of a government forcing you to murder strangers, moda, while not really caring much about the government preventing notsheigetz from cutting down his tree or me building my house without having to ask permission from and kowtow to 500 bureaucrats. That's fine; we're all different, and we have different preferences and value scales. But I think it's important to keep in mind that it's all coercion, and retain empathy for people who are miffed by a type of coercion that you don't really mind so much.

+1

The problem with coercion is it is the camel's foot in the tent.  Once that happens, there is no limit to what coercion can be applied to.  Indeed, our 70-year experiment with Progressive Liberalism has shown that it is ever expanding with the judicial branch ceasing to enforce Constitutional limitations.

[Pointedstick]

PointedStick,

I don't like all of the regulations at all either with housing. The only reason I see it as worthwhile is that people want to buy standardized things and they might not want to take a chance on buying a home if it doesn't have any codes it has been set to. You could always build a home and live in it all your lives, but what happens if you ever want to sell it? Is it possible? Would someone buy it without proper regulatory hurdles to jump through?

It's reasons like that they make me think it'd be great to reduce the regulations but you might not be able to sell it without the regulations to someone else.

Perhaps the best middle ground would be if you would want to take the risk, you can design the house yourself as long as it doesn't negatively affect others. If you want to sell it though, someone might want it brought up to current codes before they would consider buying it. That's why I would wanna look for someone who is willing to pay less and take the risk that I did my job correctly of wiring up the house, etc. so that I don't need to go through the costly procedure of regulation my house to make it sellable to others.

When we're talking about regulations, I think we always need to be asking the question, does it solve the problem it was supposed to solve? In addressing the question of saleability, the fact that real estate transactions generally include inspections despite the existence of building codes shows that particular problem not to be solved. The presence of codes and their being followed during construction says nothing to a perspective buyer about the present condition of the home; it would sort of be like handing a used car buyer the manufacturer's assurance of quality rather than the maintenance and accident records.

I like your middle ground. In fact, I think most government functions should operate that way: you can opt out, if you sign a bunch of waivers and disclosures. And who knows, maybe a private quality assurance and building certification authority would spring up to provide the same service in a less draconian way, such as how the UL and others work for electronics. It's easy to miss the fact that problems like this are smoothly and quietly solved by the private sector every day, and in a manner so effective that the news media entirely ignores it.