Anti-government people complaining about government budget cuts.

[The Mad Monk]

We want skinny, healthy PEOPLE.

OTOH, do we FORCE skinny, healthy PEOPLE?

OTOOH, Should you have a study that can double as the first line of a JOKE?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Well, the lesbians are apparently outliers compared to straight women and gay men. And they're people too, at least in theory.

If we're collectively footing a lot of their damn bills, I don't have a problem with forcing them. It would be nicer to kick them out of public systems, but that doesn't work in practice. I remember when I lived in the North Park area in San Diego, we had this crazy neighbor woman across the street and half way down the block, and her even crazier (literally, she was on and off meds for bipolar) daughter lived there sometimes too. 2-3 times a month for years there was a 911 call for the most routine ****. You can bill them, but if they're broke you can't collect. You can cite or arrest them, but can't prove a case as long as they can point to some "reasonable" symptom. "Oh, I had a chest pain"

So guess who foots the bill?

[The Mad Monk]

That's a behavioral problem, not a health problem. I think there is a need to address it as such.

As for forcing them if you're paying for them, how far do you want to go with that? I think bloomberg's pushing it, and now a New York state Justice agrees, at least on one point.

[MichaeltheGreat]

A lot of health is behavioral. Absent ****ty luck, probably most health is behavioral. Preventive medicine is a lot more cost efficient.

There's a couple of paths to "force." I think the Bloomberg type thing is silly. If I want 48 ounces of sugary ****, I can buy 12 four ounce ones if need be. The other path is to have some kind of screening/wellness qualification to determine level of service eligibility for public health services. It's already being done in the private sector. My wife's company (large) just did that through one of their insurers - do the wellness qualification, and you can opt into certain higher level HMO plans and get a discount on the premiums. If you didn't want to bother, that's fine, but you don't get the discounted premium at whatever plan you opt into, and the company only pays 100% of the discounted rate, plus you also can't opt into the higher end cover everything but the kitchen sink HMO and PPO options. The employee stil has a choice, but they pay the cost of that choice, not the other employees in the risk pool.

I think the philosophic arguments about whether government should be paying for public health at all are pretty much a waste of time - we're gonna pay for something, whether it's scraping dead people off the street or whatnot, so we should look at ways to maximize benefit/cost ratios. But not soda laws, lol. I wonder if Bloomberg is showing signs of early stage ALZ with that one?

[kentonio]

Then maybe she should have thought better of having kids and/or who she had the kids with? It's really not our obligation as a society to subsidize bad choices.

So you'd rather pay the societal costs of her or her kids turning to crime to feed/house themselves? Last I checked the costs of having ghettos in a city and maintaining a high prison population was quite considerable higher than just ensuring people were housed and fed at a vaguely decent level.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Actually, I'd rather people had ****ing brains and used them and had a little pride and took responsibility for themselves, but that ain't gonna happen.

The problem with welfare as currently conceived in much of the US is that it's a soft landing for being stupid, as well as a safety net for the truly deserving.

[kentonio]

Actually, I'd rather people had ****ing brains and used them and had a little pride and took responsibility for themselves, but that ain't gonna happen.

The problem with welfare as currently conceived in much of the US is that it's a soft landing for being stupid, as well as a safety net for the truly deserving.

True, but you're still going to be paying for the stupid people one way or another.

[DinoDoc]

So guess who foots the bill?

Can't the fat rug munchers foot the bill for the study?

[MichaeltheGreat]

If we had a way of differentially levying taxes, yes. Then again, would you, as a Mississipian, want to pay the full share of costs for the fed money your own very Red (apparently in more ways than one ) politicians admit is needed to support the state's economy.

[MichaeltheGreat]

True, but you're still going to be paying for the stupid people one way or another.

Bullets are cheap.

[rah]

Can't the fat rug munchers foot the bill for the study?

They wouldn't have needed to do a study to have those facts pointed out to them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If we had a way of differentially levying taxes, yes. Then again, would you, as a Mississipian, want to pay the full share of costs for the fed money your own very Red (apparently in more ways than one ) politicians admit is needed to support the state's economy.

Let's have states receive similar percentage of money that their residents pay in taxes to the federal government... then we'll see how much this "can't you pay for your own things" stuff continues in the Red states (esp in the South... biggest damned welfare states of them all).

[DinoDoc]

If we had a way of differentially levying taxes, yes.

Why does it have to be a government study? Can't the fat rug munchers privately fund it?

[Imran Siddiqui]

It'd help if you actually read his posts on this before asking him to restate what he already said... Post 60.

[MichaeltheGreat]

But Imran, that would take all of the fun out of the antediluvian one-liner carping.