Thread: The Nanny State

Originally Posted by BobH

What happened to that rugged individualism, the I am self sufficient don't need or want any help rhetoric often heard? Just yanking your chain a bit Dave, but yes that would be nice and helpful but even less likely to happen now and in the future due to the race to the bottom courtesy of globalization. There are no longer any resources to spare.

Bob

LOL - I see your point Bob!! I think I confuse many a people as I reason one way, and feel another! For example - no one is going to tell me when I pay $850 a month for my health care that I should wear a helmet when I ride... but I feel we all should wear helmets because to loose a mind is a terrible loss LOL!!

I go helmet less having lost my mind a long time ago, I think it was the divorce that did it.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

I go helmet less having lost my mind a long time ago, I think it was the divorce that did it.

Bob

Bob, I respectfully disagree. You lost your mind when you got married. Just kidding!

Originally Posted by earcutter

Just to be clear - I am a HUGE fan of capitalism... just not at the expense of knowledge or democracy is all.

There is no true democracy anymore, if indeed there ever was. Not in the US or anywhere else. Politicians merely tinker on the margins while the big corporations pull the strings.

Originally Posted by earcutter

LOL - I see your point Bob!! I think I confuse many a people as I reason one way, and feel another! For example - no one is going to tell me when I pay $850 a month for my health care that I should wear a helmet when I ride... but I feel we all should wear helmets because to loose a mind is a terrible loss LOL!!

Hi guys,

I usually stay out of these chats because they so often get my dander up, and that's not why I log in to SRP. But I've long had a thought about helmetless riding (and I say this as a former and future motorcyclist). The cost of a critical head injury will so far exceed $850 a month for the rest of your life that it's not fair to force the rest of the economy to share that risk with you. And that's whether you survive it or not. To that end, here's the policy I'd like to see: You can ride helmetless if a) you are an organ donor and have a DNR order, b) you just have a DNR order, or c) you can prove that you have enough personal wealth to pay out-of-pocket for the near-term or lifetime of care you could end up needing. That could easily mean millions of dollars in escrow. None of this even considers any dependents you might have, just the cost society will feel compelled to bear because we're still not quite cold enough to stand by and watch people bleed out on the highway.

When I do get a bike again I'm going to get a personalized plate for it that says DONOR, to save the EMTs precious time looking for my wallet in the ditch. And, needless to say, I won't have a bike again until I'm single again.

Roughkype

I was joking about being helmet less, I don't ride but not about losing my mind. Whether you live in a country that you pay a private health care insurer or in a country with a national health care program what you have said is brought up many times by insurance companies and governments. Basically you are talking at fault insurance. Taken to the extreme, it could mean if your condition has been deemed to be caused by you, accidentally or deliberately, you will be denied treatment. That is really asking for more regulation. I do see your point though, everyone should take reasonable precautions but I don't want to see anyone having potentially the power to play god either.

Bob

Hi Bob,

I don't mean to cede to anyone the power to play god. I've just thought about the helmet issue a lot and it seems to be a clear opportunity for people to take full personal responsibility for their choice. There's a line between full personal responsibility and externalizing costs, and I don't think it's drawn clearly enough often enough.

Do I believe we should have a similar policy in place for future diabetics? Well, that's been a subject of debate earlier in this thread. Our economy makes a whole lot of choices available to people, and some of those choices are points on a fairly short, fairly straight line to avoidable diabetes. So the Mayor of NYC is taking a stand and using political power. Perhaps if he only banned current city employees and their families from consuming giant soft drinks it would be more tenable. That way he could argue that he's acting to save the city's taxpayers money that they'll inevitably have to spend, decades down the line, propping up people who have developed avoidable diabetes and are covered by the city's employee health insurance.

Me, I exercise and eat sensibly, try not to throw my pancreas too many wild curves, and plan to invest in companies providing diabetes treatment. Cynical, but a promising growth industry as long as we remain humane enough to help one another, even with clearly self-inflicted illnesses.

There's the rub. We self-inflict so much more garbage (calories, alcohol, tobacco) than we could ever afford to clean up after, then expect the rest of the insurance pool, or medicaid, or medicare, to support us later. The missing link is personal accountability. When personal accountability fails, what's left? Legislation won't be popular. Leave folks to reap what they have sown? I dunno. Like I said, my only tenable solution is to live healthily and invest cynically.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

You know, it is not the government's role to regulate personal choices like salt in food, smoking and so on. That is the role of the insurance companies.

I think you can argue that the insurance companies can set consequences poor personal choices, however I don't know if that's their job. Their job is just to spread individual risk over a large pool, so I don't think they have to exclude the personal choice factors from that.
And then the government provides a 'safety net', which is sort of an insurance program, so they should be able to penalize poor personal choices, however they feel like defining them. Especially when the government gives freebies as 'food stamps', it should be fully entitled to exclude what they can buy (e.g. no drugs, no alcohol, no soda, no chips, etc.)
People certainly do have the option to vote a different government, or switch their insurance, or not insure at all.

And I'm pretty sure Mr. Bloomberg is entitled to be a nanny in the hospitals he's in charge of. You don't like him as a nanny, don't go to the city hospitals, and come election time vote for somebody else. What's wrong with that?