quote: Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population.
Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months.
To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets
quote: The ministry also says that curbing widening waistlines will rein in a rapidly aging society’s ballooning health care costs, one of the most serious and politically delicate problems facing Japan today. Most Japanese are covered under public health care or through their work.
Give the government the responsibility to cover your health care and you give them the power to micromanage your life. They will Re-Educate you on what to eat and how to exercise. If you resist or fail, they will FINE you.
I hope my overweight carcass is dead before this makes it to the US.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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That's Japan, the Japanese are used to the government doing a little more micromanaging. Implementing nationalized health care here in the US doesn't mean that will happen.
Heck, Obama's plan for national health care doesn't even force people to be a part of it. It just makes it available as an alternative to corporate ones.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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What's weird is Japan is one of the least obese countries in the world...I don't know why they would need to make a big deal out of this. I guess it's easier for the population to swallow something like this when nearly all of them are thin.
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Discrimination on the basis of race is also legal in Japan (despite their constitution), yet I don't think that's likely to come to the US any time soon.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Obama does make it mandatory for all children to be covered. Technically you do not have to be a part of it but your employer is forced to pay for healthcare so that 'cost' will be passed on to you
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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That sounds fantastic, though I feel there's more to the story, as very tall, fit men could have waistbands of more than 33.5 inches. I don't see the problem other than being creeped out that the government "cares," that is, that it doesn't want people to have to pay more for health insurance and such just because some fat people are likely to die. Since the government runs the health care it's just like any company saying they can't insure you without A. increasing cost or B. you fixing their issue with you, in this case, because it's an increase in risk.
This makes far more sense than trying to dictate to restaurants how large their portions should be, because it is not the restaurants who are fat, but the people eating there too much.
Posts: 655 | Registered: May 2005
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I could stand to lose some weight, so this would take money out of my pocket, but if that money went straight to health care, I'd support it.
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I'm sure this sounds more fantastic the more slim you are... but government enforced fines sound like a pretty convincing way to get people to finally get around to that new years resolution they've so faithfully broken
Posts: 655 | Registered: May 2005
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This will only happen if we have a national healthcare plan. But I can see it potentially happening to people on Medicare/Medicade/Welfare since the central government (taxpayers) funds that. But hey, the US doesn't work like that...if we've put off the metric system we can put this off too. Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Discrimination on the basis of race is also legal in Japan (despite their constitution), yet I don't think that's likely to come to the US any time soon.
Yet with 8 replies we already have two people right here who would support it. ("it" being fining fat people)
Never underestimate the determination of those who know better how to live your life than you do.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Since the government runs the health care it's just like any company saying they can't insure you without A. increasing cost or B. you fixing their issue with you, in this case, because it's an increase in risk.
Generally, insurance companies don't require you to still pay the premiums when they deny you coverage for excessive risk.
quote:Discrimination on the basis of race is also legal in Japan (despite their constitution), yet I don't think that's likely to come to the US any time soon.
fugu, there's a lot more mainstream credibility for this kind of idea here than there is for legal discrimination on the basis of race here. Penalizing smokers, overweight people, and others who engage in health-risking behavior is already part of the private sector here. I've seen many lay discussions in mainstream media about extending that in some manner to a government-supported system, although I have no idea if experts advocate this.
Rationing of medical resources based on voluntary risk-increasing behavior already occurs in other contexts. For example, some transplant facilities will not submit liver transplant candidates to UNOS if they use illicit drugs. Obviously, this is a very different context. I'm not arguing it's the same. However, it is an example of risk-increasing behavior factoring into a medical rationing decision.
No, I don't think the fact that waist-band monitoring happens in Japan means it will happen here. But it serves well as an example of some of the fears raised by the government assuming responsibility for health care for its citizens. Alleviating those fears would go a long way to convincing some of those who are not entirely convinced that single-payer health care is the way to go.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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When I was paying for my own medical insurance, I had to take an evaluation physical. Because I was very fit, I paid significantly less than if I had been overweight.
Is this all that different?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:When I was paying for my own medical insurance, I had to take an evaluation physical. Because I was very fit, I paid significantly less than if I had been overweight.
Is this all that different?
Yes, it is that different. You had a choice of insurance companies, and you could decide to entirely forgo insurance if you wanted to. In other words, you didn't have to pay the penalty had you been deemed overweight.
By the way, when I had a 33.5" waist, I was skin and bones, definitely not healthy.
Edit: I don't know that the difference is dispositive, but I think it's significant.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Squick: Could you shop around if you didn't like the rates? Could you decide to go without if you didn't like any of them? Did they send a guy with a tape measure around to make sure you stayed thin?
Yeah, that's pretty damn different.
Dag: Even if I was assured that I wouldn't have to pay more for being a little overweight, I'd still be against it. I don't want to pay for other people's unhealthy lifestyles.
And no that's not hypocritical. *I* choose what risks I take. *I* choose to pay higher rates and risk death if I do them. *I* choose to forgo health insurance if I can't afford it due to my unhealthy life style.
I don't want the fat police coming by my place, but I'll take a physical before someone agrees to insure me. I don't want the smoking police going by someone else's place but I don't want to pay taxes to support a smoker's health care.
Of course, if you want to be smart about health care, and you're not getting it through your job, just buy Catastrophic care. It's not the $50 bottle of pills and $150 doctor visit that hurts (Not when you're paying $500/mo premiums to cover $200 of benefits) It's the Cancer treatments and organ transplants that kill your bank account.
And any national health care won't DO that. It'll be all about "maintenance" care that costs 20 times as much because individuals aren't taking care of it themselves.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Even if I was assured that I wouldn't have to pay more for being a little overweight, I'd still be against it. I don't want to pay for other people's unhealthy lifestyles.
I understand that. I don't entirely agree or disagree, either. I would note that it's that perfectly understandable attitude that will lead to programs like the Japanese one happening if/when we have single-payer health care here.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Pixiest: as much as you are talking about costs, I want to be sure I understand something: even if it could be shown definitively less costly and result in a healthier society to have national health care of some sort, you would be against it?
As far as my example, yeah, there is a greater likelihood of making measurement mandatory . . . but that doesn't mean there is a very great likelihood. It isn't hard to find vocal adherents to most government policies that have actually been implemented somewhere, even the nutty ones, including on hatrack, but that's a far cry from a likeliness of passage.
And there isn't an assurance that can really be made against such things, as the ones implementing the policy will, in a short period of time, not be the ones carrying it out. Of course, that's true even when there isn't gov't health care.
For reasons this isn't likely in the US: it is far from policy even in countries that have both national health insurance and greater wastelines than Japan; it is from a culture already obsessed with regular bodily measurement (having a physical with all associated measurements is a yearly ritual in pretty much every school) and group fitness (doing morning radio exercises is still extremely common); and Congress has too many overweight people.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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fugu: Conversely, how many people here (and elsewhere in this country) would be FOR universal health care even if it was shown to be MASSIVELY more expensive? All because it would be "Fair", "take care of the poor", and would be paid for by "the rich?"
Just becuase I'm against slavery no matter how cheap it is, doesn't make my position wrong.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Even if I was assured that I wouldn't have to pay more for being a little overweight, I'd still be against it. I don't want to pay for other people's unhealthy lifestyles.
I understand that. I don't entirely agree or disagree, either. I would note that it's that perfectly understandable attitude that will lead to programs like the Japanese one happening if/when we have single-payer health care here.
That was a large part of my point in posting this story here. It's been a point I've made several times but hadn't actually heard of any country implementing it before. Yet it has come to pass.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Just becuase I'm against slavery no matter how cheap it is, doesn't make my position wrong.
I support some level of slavery in the service of preventing the murder of babies, but perhaps we should avoid such silly hyperbole and stick to more objective terms. In this case a more specific term than slavery is "compulsory tax" and I'll replace "preventing the murder of babies" with "universal healthcare for children".
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Just becuase I'm against slavery no matter how cheap it is, doesn't make my position wrong.
I support some level of slavery in the service of preventing the murder of babies, but perhaps we should avoid such silly hyperbole and stick to more objective terms. In this case a more specific term than slavery is "compulsory tax" and I'll replace "preventing the murder of babies" with "universal healthcare for children".
Umm.. I don't. I'd LOVE women to choose to keep their baby, but I don't think we should take that choice away. That WOULD be slavery and I'm against it.
But let's not turn this into an abortion debate please.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I didn't say it did make your position wrong. It does make there be less point in arguing with you over it.
edit: and while there is some legitimate controversy over whether or not a national health care system would save money in the US and provide the same level of care, in all the numerous studies comparing single payer national health care systems, none have been significantly more expensive. So you're going to have to do some very groundbreaking work if you're interested in showing that a single payer system would be much more expensive.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:It's not the $50 bottle of pills and $150 doctor visit that hurts
Ha! If only...
It seems to me that the point of insurance is to pool risk. Would insurance companies also charge extra for people who have a family history of cancer, many sexual partners, or drive too fast?
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:But let's not turn this into an abortion debate please.
I'm not talking about abortion, I'm talking about what occurs when people do not have healthcare - when they get sick, they are more likely to die. If the quality of healthcare that children receive is dependent on their parents' ability to pay, then poorer children are more likely to die or be crippled by illnesses which children of wealthier parents can afford to treat more effectively.
I can respect your principled position that even if this were the case, that you don't support compulsory taxation to mitigate this issue. I'd just rather you didn't use the term slavery to describe compulsory taxation because that term has connotations and denotations which, for most people, diverge wildly from the actual specific situation that you are describing. I similarly think it would be unfair to represent your unwillingness to support universal healthcare for children at taxpayer expense as "baby murder."
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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You're confusing Action with Inaction. By voting to tax someone, you're using the force of the ballot box against them. When it passes, you are saying "You must give us the fruits of your labour or we will kidnap you and/or murder you if you don't obey." Slavery.
Using force against someone and not saving someone are two completely different things. If inaction were the same as murder, then we're all guilty roughly 300,000 times over every single day.(or is it 3 million? I might have missed a zero.)
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Taking the fruits of one's labors might justifiably be called theft (although, in the case of taxation by a proper authority, I disagree). But the essence of slavery is not the theft of the fruits of one's labor.
True, one aspect of slavery is that the fruits of labor are taken. But the distinguishing factor of slavery is the forced labor and exercise of ownership over the physical person.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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edit: and no matter how much you fail to pay taxes, the death penalty is not on the table.
edit again: and what is taken is not the solely fruits of one's labors. It is money, and that money is the fruits of one's labors in the context of a system of a laws that, among other things, make it easier for those fruits to occur. People do not interact in a vacuum.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I understand your position - I've been an interested observer of most of the libertarian and objectivist threads of the past couple years.
I just find the use of the term slavery to refer to any compelled behavior to be hyperbole. Taxes and true slavery, of the sort where one man literally owns another as property, have coexisted in several societies. Lumping the two together destroys the value of the distinction and demeans the type of slavery that most people think of when they imagine that word, though.
I can understand wanting a rhetorical shorthand for joining them together, but to anyone not already familiar with your philosophy, it just sounds weird and the information content of your post goes down dramatically.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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I heard this story on the radio this morning, and kept trying to picture the newly thin sumo wrestlers.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I will be VERY interested to see if this works. If it does, I wouldn't put it past major insurers in the US to put a more intrusive incentive-based system in place in the US.
The difference between the US health care system and a single payer system in this respect is that the insurance companies have to make a profit, so their goal will not be to recoup their costs, but their costs plus a bit more.
As for "choice" anyone who has ever worked for a small company knows that the choices aren't really in the hands of the individual employee (other than to simply not join the plan).
People in a single payer system still have that choice too. It just means not enjoying all the other benefits of that society and having to drop out completely as opposed to only rebelling in one area of life at a time.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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fugu: The death penalty comes in when you resist being kidnapped. People HAVE been murdered by the government for refusing to pay taxes and resisting their kidnapping.
Dag: The consequences of not paying taxes are prison. Taxes are, in effect, rent on your body from the government. If you don't pay, they reposess. Government assumes they own your body. That's slavery.
Theft is when you steal the fruits of people's labour and hope you don't get caught.
Matt: You're just arguing a matter of degree. Since it's just a small sacrifice, it's not really slavery.
If you sleep with someone not your spouse for a million dollars, you're still just as much of a whore as Ten-Dollar-Dora.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:You're just arguing a matter of degree. Since it's just a small sacrifice, it's not really slavery.
Perhaps, but if so it's a dramatic difference in degree. The type of difference which seems to justify distinct vocabulary.
We don't use the terms "indentured servant" and "slave" interchangeably. We understand what it means to say that "slavery was ended in the United States" despite the existence of an income tax.
You indicated in another thread that you support a compulsory tax for military. Is that not a lesser degree of slavery as well?
quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: It seems to me that the point of insurance is to pool risk.
Definitely what they taught me when I was studying to become an actuary.
quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: Would insurance companies also charge extra for people who have a family history of cancer, many sexual partners, or drive too fast?
Hey, why not? Obligatory DNA and STD tests for everyone!
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Pix, the problem with your analogy is that you just take it a little too far. I think the system functions in something like the way you describe, but I don't think the government "thinks" about it that way, I don't think that their mentality, ownership, whatever, really comes into that much, if at all.
Have you read "On Civil Disobediance" by Henry David Thoreau. He intentionally refused to pay taxes that were being levied to fund the military. He went to jail for it, and his observations on the system that did this are very interesting. I think their more insightful and useful than what you've presented. Alarmist and inflammatory anti-government rabble is fun, but barely ever productive- pick your battles.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I wish all the libertarians would stop enslaving me by thinking that they're an island, and forcing the rest of us to take up their slack. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Man, the term 'slavery' certainly gets overused libertarians, or at least people with libertarian leanings.
quote:The consequences of not paying taxes are prison. Taxes are, in effect, rent on your body from the government. If you don't pay, they reposess. Government assumes they own your body. That's slavery.
This is pure nonsense.
First of all, taxes in the United States aren't a 'rent on your body'. The first time you have to ever pay taxes is if you either a) own property, or b) earn money.
Well, the government provides services for that property. They protect it from criminals and foreign attack. There's a case to be made for the whole taxes on earned money thing being unfair or even theft...
But it's not slavery. Why? Because you're a citizen, Pix. You have the chance to seek redress directly with the government by becoming a member of the government, or by persuasion compelling members of the government to change the system.
Slaves don't get to do that. Slaves can't go to their master and say, "Could you give us air conditioning and floors that aren't made of dirt in the hovels you stuff us in for six hours between work shifts?" They get whipped or even killed for approaching the master, much less speaking to the master. That's the kind of imagery that people have when they talk about slavery, and it's a cheap rhetorical trick to try and co-opt that connotation for your argument.
Another reason it's simply not slavery: slaves don't get to leave. If a slave doesn't like his slavery, he has to risk death or injury and sneak out to try to escape. If you don't like your 'slavery', you're free to go anywhere that will take you. Or even go nowhere. Buy a boat and live on the high seas. To a slave, remaining a part of the system is compulsory. To you, it is not.
You can't argue that, because it's a self-evident fact. It may not be easy, in fact it may be effectively impossible in your individual circumstances, but unless it's actually the government that's stopping you, it's not compulsory, which is a necessary component of slavery.
Slavery is a horrible practice that's not yet dead in the world, and not so many generations removed from actually existing in our very own society. You shouldn't dilute the term by trying to inflate your own sense of grievance.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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More Libertarians should become homeless freegans. Live off the grid, off the land, no taxes, ultimate personal freedom! Enjoy!
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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National health care is just the beginning of a slippery slope.
Slippery slope... that seems to remind me of something, but I can't put my finger on it. fal... fal... darn, can't think of it.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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unrelated: Slippery slope might be a "logical fallacy," but more often than not it is a truism about how life works. I think it should be dropped as a "logical fallacy" and the argument against it should go beyond the label. It should be proven why an event will not lead to other events. Also in real life logical argument rarely happens, if it ever does at all outside of boring classrooms dedicated to the subject.
As for Universal Health Care. I am for it in Theory, but absolutely against it in Practice. Same goes for Communism actually. Too many times political "philanthropy" ends up Dictatorship. If you want to start a social Universal Health Care, go ahead. Just leave the government out of it thank you.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Tante Shvester: I heard this story on the radio this morning, and kept trying to picture the newly thin sumo wrestlers.
Thanks, Tante -- I needed that laugh!
Bob -- it is a frightening idea, the intrusive nature of insurance coverage.
Right now, (at least in my state) some companies are trying to incentivize. $30.00 rebate for taking their on-line health quiz and getting "re-educated" in areas where you may be doing less well than they'd like to see.
I have also been told by providers (particularly mental health providers) that they are advising clients to self-pay because of the level of detail demanded by insurance companies to receive payment.
So, I think we are well on the way to ever greater intrusiveness.
FYI: Pre-baby, I could use a colored hanky as a belt in my jeans belt loops. I'd sure hate to try now . . . and that's with healthy diet, jazzercise, yoga, walking . . . *sigh*
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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