Be sure to check out this great clip featuring Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine. Go to 3:15 where he quite handily deconstructs the semantic reframing being used by many healthcare policymakers to excuse what is essentially just bad decisions made by individual parents on behalf of their children:
I personally found it quite amusing when Gillespie asked “What’s the pathogen?” causing the childhood obesity “epidemic” only to be answered that obesity is “socially contagious.” In other words, you can “catch” it – through no fault of your own – merely by being exposed to unhealthy people.
Make no mistake. Our society’s effectiveness as a whole is being undercut by the cumulative effects of many of our citizens’ lousy health habits. But these habits are formed at an individual level and involve daily specific choices and actions regarding consumption and activity.
And these choices and actions – whether good or bad – are compounded over time and make us either healthy or unhealthy in the long run.
Remember, when it comes to behavioral-based health threats, there are no victims – just volunteers.
Filed under: In the News, Power Law Fitness, Public Health, Science
Gillespie makes an interesting comment on getting rid of Medicare. The original idea of Medicare served a valuable function, unfortunately today its become so abused due to those who “choose” not to take better care of themselves and then “flood the system”…maybe dropping it all together would change peoples decisions!
…I would also like to add that Mr. Gilllespie makes a strong argument against socialized medicine for which I agree with but, should point out that what the women was referring to as “socially contagious” was the fact that children do model our parents including their “eating habits”. As for schools weighing children? Is he more concered about a childs feelings being hurt? I strongly advocate with early child education for healthy eating then the choice is up them to decide later on. At least they are armed with the literacy SOME of their parents fail to make better choices as they become adults. Whether they make a healthier choice or not will be up to the individual. He jumped around this to force his point, and failed to realize that if we dont pay for it As “obesity epidemic”…here I do disagree, obviously Mr. Gillespie has not stepped outside of his home in the last 20 years. If one visits other countries, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, France, Sweden,…if you observe the ratio of slimmer folks to fatter folks….the USA definitely has a very large, not just fat, but very obese population mainly resulting from the quality of food Americans eat. Yes, fast food. Its more profitable to have a sicker nation than a healthier nation and the industries that profit are big tobacco, big pharma, AMA, American Diebetic Ass., Kraft foods etc…