Dear Federal, State, and Local Governments,

I am a 31 year-old, responsible, masters-degree holding adult. I am a law abiding citizen with above-average intelligence. I am not a moron. You have tried and unfortunately succeeded in rescinding my property rights, limiting my freedom of speech and religious expression, and regulating my right to keep and bear arms. You tax my income. You tax what I buy, and you tax what I sell. You tax me when I die, and you tax me when a relative dies. You tax my gasoline, and tell me how fast to drive, how slow to drive, and in some cases, how often to drive. You tell me when and where I'm allowed to drink a beer or smoke a cigar. You have completely taken the fun out of McDonald's.

I do not need you to tell me what to eat or drink any more than I need you to wipe my ass. I don't need you to tell me how much sugar, or salt, or fat, or ribovlavin or Yellow #6 that I should or should not consume. Your hand is in my wallet, my gas tank and my job. Take it the hell out of my refrigerator and out of my kitchen. You are not my nanny. You are not my mommy or my daddy. I'm all grown up now, and I can take care of myself. Remember when you said that children are the future? Well, I was one in the 80s. I'm not one anymore. Now is my time. By now, I have had enough life experience to sustain employment, earn college degrees, and support a family. I truly believe that I can make a rational decision as to what to have for dinner.

You gave us the FDA and the USDA so that our medications and food would be safe, and I thank you for that. Spending days laid up in the hospital barfing my brains out from e-coli and salmonella would be most unpleasant. So, for helping to prevent that, hats off to you. However, let it be known that I cannot see a microbe. I can, however, read a label or use common sense to determine whether or not a food product has too much of a bad thing. I can choose to eat as much or as little salt or sugar or fat or whatever as I want to, and it is my choice, not yours. I appreciate you trying to protect me from the things I can't see or would have no way of finding on my own. I really do. But please, stop trying to protect me from myself.

Yours truly,

FordTruck5Speed

My question to you in response (which sounds a lot more insulting and a lot less complicated at first glance than it actually is):

Is it really about you?

Let's think for a second about what governments do and how regulations relate to those things-

Governments put in a lot of money for roads, education, social security (generically speaking, from the SSA to homeless shelters), healthcare, national defense, water infrastructure, law enforcement, and innumerable other necessary (along with other, admittedly unnecessary) services and capital projects.

All of this is paid for by tax revenues; not just your taxes, but mine and everyone else's as well. When someone doesn't wear a seatbelt and get into a car crash, it's the rest of us who pay a public employee to scrape their brains off the pavement. When someone sends their child to school, chances are that it's paid for by a large number of other people. And when someone commits a crime, it's taxpayers who provide the police that respond, detectives that investigate, the judicial system that tries suspects, and the jails that hold the convicted. Subsequently, governments require the wearing of seatbelts, dictate educational policy, and regulate law enforcement.

Obesity falls under the same heading of public costs because of its effects on public health; taxpayers have to pay more to take care of every obese individual if and when they use medicare or medicaid, health insurance policy holders (both individuals and businesses) pay more for the added expense incurred by each obese person enrolled with the same company, and the entire economy suffers from the decrease in productivity that comes with an unhealthy workforce, hurting the entire constituency of the federal government.

In any case, obesity- especially on the scale in which it appears in this country- costs everyone something, and we can all either pay to allow people to be as self-destructive as they will on their own, or the public sector can try to reduce obesity at the expense of some personal freedom.

It's a matter of balance; you just need to choose your priorities.

i disagree. I don't think the cost of healthcare of obese people is justification for banning or limiting salts. I think this only becomes an issue in a country with universal healthcare. I understand we pay for medicare and medicaid, but those services aren't available to everyone. And furthermore, I believe that they are making the choice to harm themselves. Personally, I'll pay a little extra in taxes to be able to have that choice. But it's pretty sad that I have to do so.

djyman15:

i disagree. I don't think the cost of healthcare of obese people is justification for banning or limiting salts. I think this only becomes an issue in a country with universal healthcare. I understand we pay for medicare and medicaid, but those services aren't available to everyone. And furthermore, I believe that they are making the choice to harm themselves. Personally, I'll pay a little extra in taxes to be able to have that choice. But it's pretty sad that I have to do so.

You don't think your insurance premiums are affected by the personal habits of other policy holders? Consider it like this: if Aetna decided to test its policy holders for their salt intake and charge those who use too much salt a higher premium, would you consider that a fair move in the name of free market health care?

Why wouldn't it be? Why shouldn't nonsmokers, nondrinkers and vegetarians get lower premiums? Why should the amount I pay for health insurance be affected by your bad habits?

I'm fine with insurers in the free market testing and checking people as much or as little as will allow them to provide insurance at the best rates possible.

I think that the point about the gov't controling what we eat and what safety measures we take clearly responds to itself- we should NOT allow the gov't to have control of our health care, because the logical need is for it to have control of everything that we do that contributes to it.

Please don't take away my freedoms in order to provide "free" healthcare.

They already do that, based on actuarial tables.

And remember, the amount he pays for insurance is jacked up by your bad habits. Do you drive? Live in an urban area? Have the wrong genes? All these increase the chances of accidents and/or health problems. Shouldn't we jack up your rates because of these?

I disagree insofar as I believe the consumer has a right to know what they're putting into their bodies. Of course we have a responsibility to educate ourselves, but the food industry didn't like having to put fat and sodium levels on their labels, either.

Consumers deserve to have some level of transparency regarding the goods that we buy. I'm all for the free market, but the market needs rules, and it is the government's job to enforce them when necessary (and it is often necessary).

It's about my (and everyone else's) freedom to make our own choices and control our own lives. You say that obesity costs everyone. It does if you believe that it is the public's responsibility to take care of everyone else. If you believe in individual liberty, then what some 400-pound eating machine eats is his own problem. Banning foods or beverages or at least making it harder for me, a 175-pound man in good health, doesn't solve the problems as prescribed. If I want a hamburger, I'll eat a frickin' hamburger and there's nothing you can do about it. This idea that the government has to take care of us and clean our bums when we're done in the bathroom is ludicrous. Live your own life, with your own insurance and deal with your own health issues if you decide to eat 9 meals a day at Burger King.

FordTruck5Speed:

It's about my (and everyone else's) freedom to make our own choices and control our own lives. You say that obesity costs everyone. It does if you believe that it is the public's responsibility to take care of everyone else. If you believe in individual liberty, then what some 400-pound eating machine eats is his own problem. Banning foods or beverages or at least making it harder for me, a 175-pound man in good health, doesn't solve the problems as prescribed. If I want a hamburger, I'll eat a frickin' hamburger and there's nothing you can do about it. This idea that the government has to take care of us and clean our bums when we're done in the bathroom is ludicrous. Live your own life, with your own insurance and deal with your own health issues if you decide to eat 9 meals a day at Burger King.

Perhaps you missed the assertion I and kswiger made about private insurance policies. The cost to you is directly affected by the costs of taking care of others; in other words, if you and I have the same insurer, you can bet my unhealthy habits are going to affect your bottom line.

Not only that, but our country has a rather contradictory attitude about our health care industry. We want it to be private, but most of us would agree that when we call 911, we expect an immediate response to our emergency. Considering the widespread abuse of 911 services by uninsured people calling for help for non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries, what do we do about the billions of dollars wasted? A good friend of mine told me probably half the EMT calls in Houston are for non-emergencies and a great many of those are for uninsured callers who will never pay the bill for the service. As long as we make this kind of demand on our health care industry, we are always going to be stuck paying the bill for others.

We want everybody to pay their fair share, but we don't want to leave anyone to die. I don't know if you can have it both ways.

Anse:

djyman15:

i disagree. I don't think the cost of healthcare of obese people is justification for banning or limiting salts. I think this only becomes an issue in a country with universal healthcare. I understand we pay for medicare and medicaid, but those services aren't available to everyone. And furthermore, I believe that they are making the choice to harm themselves. Personally, I'll pay a little extra in taxes to be able to have that choice. But it's pretty sad that I have to do so.

You don't think your insurance premiums are affected by the personal habits of other policy holders? Consider it like this: if Aetna decided to test its policy holders for their salt intake and charge those who use too much salt a higher premium, would you consider that a fair move in the name of free market health care?

Why wouldn't it be? Why shouldn't nonsmokers, nondrinkers and vegetarians get lower premiums? Why should the amount I pay for health insurance be affected by your bad habits?

I think my premiums are probably a lot more affected by the greed of insurance companies and unnecessary and overpriced tests run by doctors a lot more than they are by lifestyle choices. I really want to know why an MRI still costs thousands of dollars, it seems that is overpriced (and granted I don't know,if someone can explain otherwise, feel free)

But I don't disagree, in a free market health care system, that people who live healthier lifestyles should be charged less on their premiums. That's the way it works with car insurance, seems to be good enough. That being said, we certainly are having problems regulating a free market health care system.

My answer would change in a universal system, which I'm in favor of. I'd probably look at taxing trans fats and high-sodium foods for two reasons. 1) It raises money for the health care system 2) It discourages low-income earners from eating unhealthy foods, as they are right now. But an all together ban? That's short-sighted. We certainly get a lot of money from sin-taxes. I'm not saying a ban would lead us to prohibition times, but I think it's not looking at the big picture

What makes anyone think the government can regulate the amount of salt in food, when they can't seem to get a handle on the amount of poisonous paint on toys?

FordTruck5Speed, great posts! I'm not a libertarian, but it's my default position unless there are very strong countervailing arguments. In this instance, the government should butt out.

Yes, I do not like the idea of the government banning or telling food makers how much salt to put in their products. I am okay with the government educating us about how much salt is healty/unhealthy and forcing food makers to put labels on their products disclosing what is in them. But we should be able to handle it from there.

So just because someones bad habits increase the chances does not necessarily mean that they are going to be less healthy than the person that has no bad habits.

I have been a smoker for years and in the 30 years that I have worked I can honestly say that on the average I have maybe taken off one day a year for illness if even that. I have only been to the emergency room about 5 times and rarely see my doctor for anything but physicals. I have been in the hospital three times (two for childbirth). I am not on any medication (occasionally take aspirin for headaches) and am generally very healthy. Yet I have worked with people who supposedly have healthy lifestyles who are constantly calling in sick, going to the doctor and ending up in the emergency rooms.

Just because someone has bad habits doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to use their insurance more or have more health problems than the person that doesn't.

Donnamp, thank you. Rational thought and reality all wrapped up into one little post. Rare, yet refreshing.