23 replies to this topic

[maineman]

We could give a rat's @ss if you want to kill yourself. Go for it. Just don't ask the rest of us to pay for your "health" once it starts to go in the toilet.

When considering "Health Care" benefits, the issue comes down to who "deserves" what care?

If someone smokes and drinks and then needs oxygen and medications and liver transplants should the rest of the taxpayers or company employees pay for it?

No one has ever or will ever make it illegal for you to abuse yourself. It is your right. Just take responsibility for your actions.

mm

I guess people who drive poorly (even for the conditions, not speed limit) and get in a wreck should not get long term expensive care if they end up with brain damage or spinal cord injuries -- OR -- someone who walks carelessly on ice and ends up the same way -- just like people who ride horses, play football, jump blindly into the old "swimmin'' hole, hike on rocky terain, etc., etc.

How 'bout those who don't check their house for Radon and "irresponsibly" get lung cancer -- or -- kids who get serious conditions from lead poisoning because their parents didn't have the house checked and "remediated" for lead paint --or -- don't get checked from head to toe every day and get crippling Lyme disease -- and on and on -- and on.

(believe me, I could go on for pages and pages about everyday "irresponsible" things people do -- like talking on cell phones when walking or driving)

Pick the simple examples YOU decided, with a simplistic mind set, and it's easy to point fingers.

Sounds like you support the Nanny State. I wonder what you'd think when "they come for you" and say you don't DESERVE medical care because of what you did or didn't do.

Not sure what a "nanny state" state is but humans, like many species, seem to have an altruistic need to help one another. Its a nice thing. Knowledge, however, is fluid, and final knowledge takes time. Ideas are postulated and tested and reformatted until a clear consensus evolves. In the meantime humans like to share what they know (think: schools, taverns, chat rooms, books, radio, etc.). The mark of an intelligent man is when he can admit that what he previously held true is not, and he can adjust his thinking.

As for the rest of your comment it comes extremely close to why health care reform will be so difficult. Who is responsible for what? What part of healthcare, if any, should be considered a "right" and which a "privilege"?

mm

[OEXCHAOS]

The part you pay for is a right. The rest is charity, or should be thought of as such. My thoughts on this are below, though.

[stocks]

Mayor Bloomberg Doesn’t Live by His Health Rules

HE dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has become New York City’s nutritional nag, banning the use of trans fats, forcing chain restaurants to post calorie counts and exhorting diners to consume less salt. Now he is at it again, directing his wrath at sugary drinks in a new series of arresting advertisements that ask subway riders: “Are you pouring on the pounds?”

Botching the basics

Mike Bloomberg's municipal meltdown

It was Fiorello La Guardia, New York's greatest mayor ever, who said there is no Democratic or Republican way to pick up Gotham's garbage.

La Guardia's maxim spoke to attention to basics: While there necessarily must be partisanship in government, it rarely has much to do with the delivery of essential services. Keep the fundamentals under control and folks will overlook a lot.

But when a mayoralty comes to be defined by fanciful notions -- political labels, bike paths, french fries and other irrelevancies -- forgiveness following catastrophe will be a long time coming.
Especially when the mayor's reaction to the debacle ranges from surly condescension to bewildered resentment to transparently feigned contrition.


Read more: http://www.nypost.co...N#ixzz1A0RWhuRc

[stocks]

Live it up and live a long life

Eat, drink, and be merry. Heredity seen as top factor

Julie Jones turned 90 in June, outlasting all of her four siblings after her longest-living brother died just over a week ago at 88.
How did she live so long? Not because she was constantly Jazzercizing, denying herself a yummy peanut butter sandwich or staying away from a fun party.
As someone who hates exercise, who loves an occasional scotch on the rocks or a chocolate milkshake from McDonald's, and who smoked for many years, Mrs. Jones says she comes by her longevity naturally. Her mother lived until she was 96.


(the) study, first published Wednesday in the online version of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, looks at 477 Ashkenazi Jews ages 95 to 112 who lived independently. The Ashkenazi Jews are more genetically uniform, the researchers said, making use of them as a study population a clearer way to track gene differences.

The study group was interviewed about their lifestyles at age 70 to paint a picture of how they lived as adults. They responded to questions about weight and height to calculate body mass index along with information about alcohol consumption, physical activity, smoking and diet. Their answers were compared with those from a second group of 3,164 people who were close to the same age and who had been examined between 1971 and 1975 as a part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Overall, the study found that the Ashkenazi Jews didn’t have healthier habits than their comparison-group peers.

“Our centenarians haven’t been very special from the point of view of interacting with the environment,” Dr. Barzilai said of his research. “They smoked, they exercised less than people within their control group. It looks like in this case the environment wasn’t really very important to bringing those people to being 100 years old. It means the genes are more important.”

Genetics

[stocks]

Britain is the Ultimate Nanny State

In Britain everything is policed, except crime.

This is the logical dead end of the Nanny State. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the British welfare regime in 1942, his goal was the "abolition of want" to be accomplished by "co-operation between the State and the individual." In attempting to insulate the citizenry from life's vicissitudes, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. As I write in my book: "Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity."

Big Government means small citizens: it corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically. Within living memory, the city in flames on our TV screens every night governed a fifth of the Earth's surface and a quarter of its population. When you're imperialists on that scale, there are bound to be a few mishaps along the way. But nothing the British Empire did to its subject peoples has been as total and catastrophic as what a post-great Britain did to its own.

There are lessons for all of us there.

Nanny

[stocks]

Bloomberg blocks food donations for homeless due to … salt and fat content

You might die cold and hungry on the streets of New York, my friends, but at least you won’t have to worry about high salt intake.

What is with this guy running his little nutritional experiments on the city’s poorest people? Are they simply targets of opportunity, dependent upon NYC’s government for survival and therefore forced to follow whatever pleasure-stifling nannyism Bloomberg can cook up for them?


link

[stocks]

Lawsuit that sought to ban toys with Happy Meals is tossed out

"McDonald's must stop exploiting children at some point," Jacobson said, adding that eventually, the tactic "will seem as inappropriate and anachronistic as lead paint, child labor and asbestos."



http://www.latimes.c...0,1402761.story

[stocks]

America unites in contempt for loathsome nanny-state mayor

The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited


New York City Council president breaks with Bloomberg over “punitive” soda ban

She’s not confident that the ban is being well received even in the deep blue utopia of NYC.

Here's a two minute video of man-on-the-street reaction to the new ban. I don’t want to spoil it but the word “douche” is mentioned.


http://hotair.com/ar...itive-soda-ban/

[stocks]

Soft Drink Consumption Not the Major Contributor to Childhood Obesity, Study Says

The authors found the main predictors of childhood obesity in Canadian children were household income, ethnicity, and household food security.

Most children and youth who consume soft drinks and other sweetened beverages, such as fruit punch and lemonade, are not at any higher risk for obesity than their peers who drink healthy beverages,
says a new study published in the October issue of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.


http://www.scienceda...20614152232.htm

[Rogerdodger]

Do you mean that conventional wisdom is not always correct?

Most children and youth who consume soft drinks and other sweetened beverages, such as fruit punch and lemonade, are not at any higher risk for obesity than their peers who drink healthy beverages,

I remember that my daughter's best friend lived on candy and sugar and was as skinny as a rail.

I also remember that we had Kool-aid and Cokes when I was a kid.
With LOTS of sugar and candy, even movie popcorn cooked in coconut oil!

But we also had bicycles, baseball, football, basketball, pogo sticks and even jump rope.
Tag and idiot ball were not only fun but LEGAL!
So was running on the playground.

Now idiot ball is too dangerous and tag is sexual harassment.
Soon football will be outlawed.
So today we have a sofa and an electronic game console or two, making exercise virtual and fat real.
Plus free meals at school, even in the summer. (That keeps the unions happy)
I wonder if there is any connection?

Edited by Rogerdodger, 17 June 2012 - 11:48 AM.