On another messageboard, some are going on about RJ’s Law and what a great idea this is. It’s the proposal that all of those on government assistance should have to submit to random drug testing in order to keep their benefits. Red County Online > Home
It is my belief that there are other ways to address drug problems in society. Random drug testing of social service recipients is NOT the way to go. And why should people’s children be punished for their crime? That, among other negative things, is exactly what happens when you take away benefits from a mother who fails her drug test.
I also think it would prevent people from getting the help they need because of the fear of this government intervention. Just another reason for them to live their lives below the radar and never rise out of their circumstances. Addiction is frightening and stigmatized enough that so many people who need help are ashamed to seek it. This would make the problem exponentially worse.
Addiction is a disease just like cancer is a disease. You don’t cure it by criminalizing its victims.
The fallacy is that taxpayer dollars are funding all of this drug addiction, that their hard-earned money is going to buy meth for some addict.
It is my belief that addicts will get their drugs no matter what. So, while they may not be able to pay the rent, they will always find the ways and means to get drugs. This will happen whether they are on welfare or not. The lack of welfare just means that their children won’t eat or that they will all go without healthcare–things that everyone deserves whether they are an addict or not. Again, keep them in fear and they will go further into the underground of society.
If any of these proposals were proven to actually help anyone, I’d love to see the study. I’m 100% a humanist and in favor of things that actually have proven results. The only thing this idea presents is another heavy-handed government program that will make people feel like they are living in a police state, with no privacy and no freedom to make choices for themselves. And when people are in fear, and living like rats in a cage, you can expect crime to go up and the problem in question to multiply. That’s the reality.
This kind of thing is another reason why I’m opposed to government-run health care. Pretty soon you won’t be covered if you smoke, you won’t be covered if you drink, you won’t be covered if you don’t bring your weight in accordance with government mandates, etc., etc., etc.
Then, once you’re on that slippery slope, it’s only a matter of time until you’re not covered if your body fat’s too high, or if you don’t eat a diet with government mandated amounts of carbohydrates or protein or whatever. And then of course, what about motorcycles - they can be injurious, so what about excluding motorcycle injuries from coverage? Or what if you’re hurt in an automobile accident and it’s your fault? Let’s exclude that too!
And so on and so on, ad ifinitum.
When the government spends money on your behalf, it’s only a matter of time until it starts trying to control what you do.
Errr…the usual reason put forward for gov’t healthcare is to help provide universal coverage. I doubt any plan would involve any of the things you mention, if anything, gov’t healthcare usually goes to people with high risk factors that can’t get affordable coverage from private plans.
And I’ve never heard of medicaid/medicare denying coverage for any of the things you mentioned, despite the fact that those programs have existed for decades.
You mean, as compared to now, when just about everything is covered without any fine print whatsoever, right? :dubious:
All the reasons people currently use to reject going to universal healthcare are alreadyhappening, and have been for a while. Why do these silly memes persist?
The government instituted various assistance programs to help folks, and those programs have a specific purpose in mind. (For example, food stamp program to buy food.)
Does the government have any right to expect (or enforce) that that money/aid be used for the purpose it was collected for?
Like I said, it’s only a matter of time. Once everyone has been brought under the government’s umbrella and they have no other choice, and once the government begins to seek ways to lessen its exorbitant expenses, I have no doubt at all that a scenario just as I described will begin to assert itself.
The government’s argument will be that when you are unhealthy or engage in unhealthy behavior, it costs everyone money. And it’s true, it does.
This is why I’m opposed to ‘everyone’ paying for everyone else. It gives the government a good excuse to dictate peoples’ lives.
I think he’s right in terms of where this stuff is eventually headed. The costs of these things are going to have to come down somehow and I think people will be willing to say “you’re fat/you smoke/whatever and that’s your own fault - why should society have to pay for it?” But welcome to the modern age, folks - everything is everybody’s business, particularly the government and your employer.
They argue that now. And while Medicare and Medicaid programs are cut to the bone to pay for other programs, they still aren’t done away with entirely.
And yes, it does. Emergency rooms are overloaded, understaffed and unable to service all patients adequately. Funnily enough, I don’t see private insurers pay out of their bottom lines to make sure good, quality healthcare is in plentiful supply, and most insurers (aside from Kaiser) will disallow anything that isn’t what some 75 year old retired dermatologist without any CME updates considers “medically necessary.” I believe that takes us down to “give 'em a pill and get rid of 'em.” Which is a shame, as things like weight loss programs and reduced premiums for patients in good health with a low BMI used to be fairly common.
Evidently you’ve not heard of ERISA or the various state agencies that regulate health insurance. Just because it’s a private industry doesn’t mean the government doesn’t have their fingers in it.
How do other countries with universal healthcare (Canada, UK, etc) handle this? Does the government have any say in how you live your life (you must exercise, not smoke, not drink, etc)?
This is about trends, and in this case, “it hasn’t happened yet” doesn’t prove it won’t. Living in one of the first cities that banned smoking indoors and probably the first to ban trans fats, I’m pretty confident that it is going to happen. And I’m not even opposed to government health care the way Starving Artist is. I just think it’s pretty clear that society is moving in a direction where people say “If you’re getting any of the government’s money, it has the right to tell you what to do.”
That’s not to hijack this into a health care debate. We had a similar debate recently, and I see the drug rule as being of the same class as the rules that allow companies to test their employees for drugs. It’s intrusive and I regard it as unnecessary. In the case of welfare, Indygrrl is right: people who are addicted need treatment, and cutting off their money (or their family’s money) is counterproductive. [That’s like cutting funds at schools that don’t test well.] And people who use drugs occasionally aren’t the problem.
Certainly there will be (and already are) laws to regulate behavior to protect citizen health, and there may even be a trend towards increasing those types of laws (though I’m not conviced that’s the case, there have been bans on behaviors deemed unhealthy for a long time). But the question is whether gov’t paid healthcare is the reason for that. The transfat ban, and many smoking bans are done at a local level, where the entities doing the banning don’t pay much of their citizens health costs, so I don’t think the reason for such bans is a gov’t attempt to save money.
Well, the OP did say “…and other ways for government to invade our lives,” so I thought I was on safe ground.
But it does highlight my assertion that government will use government benefits to try to force particular types of behavior, thus the more you have government paying for things the more control (and invasiveness) it will subsequently have over your life.
This isn’t to say, however, that I have a problem with food stamps not paying for tobacco and alcohol or things of that nature. In that case the government is simply saying “we will pay for you to obtain certain things you need to live, but not these other things which aren’t necessary”, as opposed (per the OP) to saying "if you don’t behave in such and so way, we will take these things you need to live away from you.
Indygrrl, while I disagree entirely with the proposed law, I think it’s possible that it will play well with the state government. Recently, Gov. Schwarzenegger asked the legislature to cut Medi-Cal spending (and every other department) by 10%. This could very well help meet that goal were it to be passed.
I didn’t say you did anything wrong in talking about health care. Anyway-
We already agree here, although in this system I’m not opposed to the government offering a health plan to people who aren’t able to afford one. I am opposed to this growing excess of government involvement in people’s lives and discouragement of behaviors that are deemed bad.
I thought you were suggesting (in light of Maureen’s comment along the same line) that the health care discussion was something of a hijack, and I just wanted to point out my reason in bringing it up in this thread. No offense was intended.
Countries, populations, cultures and governments vary a great deal. For this reason I think it’s difficult to say that because something may work satisfactorily in one country it is likely to work just as satisfactorily in another.
I’ve simply seen too many instances of heavy-handedness here on the parts of both liberal government-solution finders and conservatives determined to thwart them to believe that any government social program here would function in the same way that it does in Canada, or anywhere else.