A fat tax, or the end of personal responsibility?

By Daniel Tetzlaff, April 11, 2011
 

THIS (See article below) IS WHY NATIONAL HEALTHCARE WILL BE A DISASTER. IT IS AT COMPLETE ODDS WITH FREEDOM.

When taxpayers pay for everyone’s health, it logically becomes in the public / tax-payer interest to [at first promote, then mandate] a "healthy" lifestyle.

Sure that sounds good, but what it will ultimately devolve into is government mandates on what you eat, when you eat it, as well as mandated exercise and government-controlled risk management (that is, how you live your life).

These risks and life-style choices should be up to the INDIVIDUAL PERSON, not the collective taxpayer, with the individual person responsible for insuring those decisions and/or paying for their consequences.

If you don’t think people should over-eat, drink, and ride motorcycles, then don’t over-eat, drink or ride motorcycles! Don’t boss your fellow man around, even though it now makes logical tax-payer sense to do so. Such a mindset is antithetical with personal liberty and freedom. This contradiction cannot be reconciled, short of simply making fewer and fewer of the rich pay for more and more everything, ad nauseum. Besides being morally bankrupt, this collective attitude disincentivizes excellence and wealth-creation, which will lower overall prosperity.

(Not to mention that government-controlled healthcare will lead to doctor shortages, rationing, and fewer medical innovations and life-saving drugs and procedures.)