I’ve already stated in this thread that I used to smoke and I occasionally eat junk food. I very seldomly drink anymore. But I really don’t think whether or not I like something is relevant. I like junk food occasionally, but I want it out of schools completely. I like alcohol occasionally but for god’s sake I don’t want 11 year olds to be able to buy it.
And if you’re asking me why I don’t consider higher alcohol and junk food taxes, well, come to think of it I’m not completely closed to the idea. I’d have to think about it some more.
If I dislike getting stabbed in the throat with a fire poker, and think people shouldn’t do that, and I like planting trees and think people should do that, does that make those things invalid because the list is personally biased? I don’t think so. There is practical objectivity in society.
Sure. But you have no hesitation at banning smoking (which you dislike) yet balk at taxing booze and junk food (which you, along with most of us, like), despite them causing equal or larger healthcare costs. That’s the bias.
Everyone’s missing the elephant in the room. If the problem is that once you have socialized medicine it’s not fair to make some people pay more than their share, then the first reform that’s needed is to move more of the tax burden onto the poor and middle class.
Even if a middle class person is extremely healthy, he’s more of a financial burden on the system than a rich fat guy, because the rich fat guy is putting more of his own cash into the system in the first place.
So… No universal health care unless an equitable share of the cost is borne by the lower and middle classes.
No, we live with the consequences also. Maybe those people on the block were stupid in getting bad mortgages, and you were smart in not falling for it, but your property values still fall when their vacant houses become weed infested eyesores.
Moi? I can and have done it on my own, but I got 800s in both the Math SAT and the Math Achievement tests. Car dealers hate me because I can compute the actual costs of various financing plans in my head and can show them that the one they are pushing is a ripoff. If everyone were like me, your plan would be fine. The difference between us is that I’m aware that not everyone is a genius, and don’t think people who’d have trouble coming up with the right answers themselves deserve either scorn or bankruptcy.
15 year mortgage, 30 year mortgage - fine. The restrictions we need are keeping unscrupulous brokers from selling stuff they know the borrower can’t afford. And you’re against this why? Perhaps because you think the riff raff who’d fall for it deserve the results?
Don’t you think it’s a might bit arrogant to say that with two weeks of research you know more than a panel of experts, who have studied medicine in school for a good 8 years, and who have decades of experience, and who work on it full time? Even I’m not that arrogant. I’d guess that you don’t know anything very well, but those of us who have studied in a field for a long time know what knowing something feels like, and we know when we don’t know something, as is the case for drugs. You’re like some kid who rides an inner tube around a cove and is then convinced he’s ready for an around-the-world sailing trip.
Your little rant didn’t address how not paying for treatments shown to be ineffective reduces our freedom - except the freedom to have the lack of knowledge of a lot of the population taken advantage of.
BTW, IIRC the last FDA discussion ended with both Sam and I agreeing that there was a tradeoff between the risk of a bad drug getting out and the risk of delaying a good drug for extra testing.
Since I was a kid taxes, warning labels, banning smoking in restaurants, and social pressure had cut down tobacco use a lot. I came across some matchbooks the other day, and realized that you hardly see any of these things any more. Slightly higher taxes, advertising campaigns, and labeling junk food with calorie counts will probably do the job just fine. But aside from that, there is absolutely no reason to let it into the schools, any more than you need to show soap operas in class.
I went to a rock concert a couple weeks ago with my brother. At one point they played a slow song and the lead singer said “alright, everybody get those lighters up!” In a ~3,000 seat arena I swear to you there was not more than 150 lighters or so. And this was a sold-out house with a very enthusiastic crowd. My brother leaned into my ear and commented, “10 years ago this place would’ve been lit up like a Christmas tree.”