Mama's House

Snake Plissken: Your rules are really beginning to annoy me.

So I came across this CNN site that tells you what the presidential candidates positions are on health care and was annoyed by how many times I read the phrase, "Mandates individual health insurance coverage for all Americans."

Without going into details about why that is a terrible fucking idea I'd like to simply point out this:

When government picks up the tab for health costs, it inevitably feels it is responsible for curtailing them through "prevention," which can often elide into compulsion. As Faith Fitzgerald, a professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine, put it..: "Both healthcare providers and the commonweal now have a vested interest in certain forms of behavior, previously considered a person's private business, if the behavior impairs a person's 'health.' Certain failures of self-care have become, in a sense, crimes against society, because society has to pay for their consequences." [emphasis mine]

Don't think that happens? Well then I guess you haven't noticed the smoking bans or the ban on trans fats. And where exactly does this all end? Certainly there are many other activities and products out there that are considered unhealthy; talking on your cell phone while driving, just talking on your cell phone, serving more than one drink to a woman during dinner, serving too much food for dinner. Who is to say that those things and many others shouldn't be banned by the same logic used to ban smoking and trans fats? I mean why not just have the government ban everything that is even remotely unhealthy so that every American can be insured at a low cost?

Seriously, don't vote for anyone who supports government plans for universal health care. I know Snake wouldn't.

Snake Plissken: Got a smoke?
Malloy: The United States is a non-smoking nation! No smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, no women - unless you're married - no foul language, no red meat!
Snake Plissken: Land of the free.