Does high-school football do more harm than good? Does it cost an unreasonable amount for the taxpayer (I live in Canada where the taxpayer pays for everyone’s medical bills). Personally - I think high school football is probably fine (unless the stats show otherwise… though I don’t know the stats exactly). In the USA where the taxpayer doesn’t pay for the footballer’s medical bills, I see even less reason to intervene.
How many people need taxpayer-funded medical treatment from skydiving mishaps? Not that many. I’d have to see the stats on that too though.
Most normal people are “self-regulating” when it comes to dangerous sports. I used smoking and drugs as my examples initially because there are SOME activities that are not self-regulating - in the sense that the individual can’t be trusted to decide what’s best (ie they’re not acting rationally, but are driven by addiction or laziness). An example of laziness would be not wearing your seatbelt. Everest is also one of those things where people are willing to put themselves at great personal risk (1 in 7 die, or so Wikipedia tells me) for reasons that are rather difficult to justify.
While I don’t believe all “somewhat slightly kinda risky” activities should be regulated, I do think that activities that have the potential to cost taxpayers huge sums of money should be. These tend to be closer to the extreme end of the spectrum, I agree.
There is no way to do that calculation that everyone would agree on, so there’s no basis for making a decision. You are proposing to use cold hard math to deal with things that don’t lend themselves to that. That is why this whole proposal is doomed.
How much value do you put on team spirit and community sense of worth? Or pain and embarrassment?
But I don’t have to decide. Let the participants decide how much it’s worth. Then ask an insurance company if that’s enough money to cover a health/medical plan for their activities.
Anyone who wants to can do a 25-year regression analysis on the data in the citation I posted up above for high school football.
I did, and found the following using linear regression:
High School Football
Fatalities: y = -0.1015x + 5.36, R² = 0.09
Catastrophic Injuries: y = 0.0177x + 10.05, R² = 0.0014
Serious Injuries: y = -0.2554x + 13.12, R² = 0.2088
Make of that what you will, but overall it looks like there is a downward trend in serious injuries and fatalities, but an upward trend in catastrophic injuries.
Borzo, I agree with your responses to my questions. Which leads me to a couple issues with your solution.
First, I believe the average person currently views skydiving as a dangerous sport. Therefore, under the proposed tax scheme there would need to be some mechanism for promotional dollars spent to modify that viewpoint, much like the recent smoking campaigns (obviously not to that extent or dollar amount). Otherwise we end up wasting societies money regulating activities that really don’t need any additional regulation.
Second, the OP is specifically about banning dangerous sports, not dangerous activities. So far the examples for almost certain negative societal impact (heroin and smoking) are not sports. Can you give an example of a popular sport that should fall under such regulation? I can think of some borderline cases, but as of yet nothing that is both accessible to most of the population, leaves the government on the hook for the outcome, and that public opinion would agree is clearly detrimental to society.
That isn’t what you proposed earlier. This side steps the whole cost benefit to society issue and goes straight to only risk assessment of the likelihood of catastrophic medical expenses.
Walking across the street and driving a car have inherent dangers. Why would you exclude those from the calculations? You are arbitrarily drawing a line and saying that above this line things are too dangerous to be covered by the public, but below this line everything is covered. If we’re going to have universal healthcare then I want it to cover all sorts of things, not limit it to what someone who doesn’t participate in my particular activity thinks is too dangerous because of some statistics and ignoring the non-tangible benefits.
Football is a tough one because so much of the damage isn’t as easily detectable. One of major themes of the last conference I attended (the National Neurotrauma Society) was how difficult it is to set guidelines for concussive injuries, how cumulative they are, and how much more risky they may be for younger players. The NFL has become increasingly interested in this topic over the years, but they also probably don’t want to sideline their players as long as it would probably take to eliminate risk (since a second concussion during recovery from the first one is much more damaging). Plus, concussions are hugely underreported in the first place.
So, how do you assess the risk to society? If the average high school football player is losing X IQ points or increasing their risk of alzheimer’s/parkinsons by Y amount, how do you determine the taxation rate?
Not to mention, how do you assess the benefit to society? If the average high school football player is getting regular exercise and is learning training and workout skills that could help them to be a better than average exerciser the rest of their life?
To be honest, even though I live in Canada, I would have trouble specifying an ATHLETIC SPORT that has extremely negative effects on society (financial, or otherwise). Football might be one, but I’m too lazy to crunch the numbers myself. (But I do believe that the numbers can be crunched.) But the benefits of football playing might outweigh the negatives. In fact, it’s probably likely.
It doesn’t completely sidestep it… since those members of society who would benefit the most from football would be the ones who’d have to pay the taxes on it. I’m okay with them deciding amongst themselves how much “community building” is worth ($$$ value).
Bolding mine: Exceedingly unlikely claim. The complete effects of repeated concussions from football on the brain are not even entirely known, considering how prevalent underreporting of concussions is and how little IQ testing is done in adults over time. If you have the data to back up this assertion, you could publish your results in a very high profile journal indeed.
Everyone walks across the street. And people who drive cars pay extra in taxes.
But the line I draw is somewhat arbitrary, yes – but that doesn’t mean that smart people with statistics and calculators can’t decide on a reasonable place to put that line. I’m not the person to make that decision, but that doesn’t mean a reasonable decision can’t be made.
EVERYTHING should be covered under my universal healthcare. I’m not arguing against that at all. What I’m saying is that things that cost the taxpayers a disproportionate amount of money should be taxed extra. (Like cigarettes.) In contrast to walking across the street, which everyone does, NOT everyone smokes tobacco. The cost of tobacco-related medical issues is significant… and therefore I believe that those who participate in that activity should pay more in taxes – and they do.
As for non-tangible benefits, I think they should be accounted for too. I never said they should be ignored. Sports make people healthier, and reduces future medical bills. This should be considered in the grand equation.
Given the right resources, the numbers can be crunched to give an accurate result. Is it worth the effort? I dunno.
The thing is, how accurate does the number crunching have to be? Perhaps an order of magnitude estimate is enough. I’m sure that kind of estimate can be done.
Remember, I’m not advocating the nickle/diming of football players… but with a case like cigarettes - even though we don’t know the exact cost - we know it costs enough that we should tax it, heavily.
Bad diet is probably the number 1 cause of health care costs. Tell me how you are going to tax food. Potatoes can be baked or french fried; how are you going to decided who pays more? If you can solve the problem of taxing food then we discuss sporting activities.
Increase taxes on corporations that push bad food. Remove the tax breaks that they are getting. Prices of shitty food will rise. Consumers will eat less shitty food.
Raise taxes on everyone. Then provide a tax break for those who pass a health assessment, and to those who take steps to become healthy, eg attend a gym.
Again, I have to say NO to any more government interference in my life and my personal business. What I choose to do, and what/how I choose to eat, and how much, is none of their (or anyone else’s) business. I don’t want some bureaucrat or do-gooder deciding what is “good for me”. The very idea of it is offensive.
I’d be against this. I can pass the health assessment. But am completely annoyed that my 2 times a week rec hockey isn’t accepted by my medical insurance and reimbursed the same as twice a week attendance to a gym*.
*not any old gym, only the select few chains they are in apparently in collaboration with.
Now you’re getting to the point of having government micromanage everyone’s life. You’ll get a strong (and justified) pushback on this because it is a horribly inefficient way of managing costs. It would make far more sense to simply put a limit on the health care anyone receives, and give an appeal process.
In other words, your solution is worse than the problem.