Say "NO" to Socialized Medicine

[JRoberts 0]

My dear friend and mentor, Dr. Gary Forsythe, wrote this. He gave me permission to repost this, as I did both here and at Homer Reborn.

In recent times one of the biggest issues cooked up by members of

the professional political class is the need to establish a

national health program to cover all U.S. citizens. In doing so

the U.S.A. would join other advanced Western countries such as

Canada and the United Kingdom. Although health care is not

guaranteed in the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, these

politicians argue that it should be regarded as a basic right.

They keep telling us that there are forty or more million people in

the U.S.A. who are living without any form of health insurance, and

that this situation is intolerable.

First of all, it could be equally argued that since no human being

can survive without water, why don't the politicians raise our

taxes to create a federal bureaucracy that redistributes the tax

money in order to make sure that every single U.S. citizen's monthly

water bill has been paid? Secondly, when stressing the horror of

having so many people uninsured, the politicians fail to mention

that a significant portion of the people being included in this

number are illegal aliens. Thus, if the number of illegal aliens

were to be subtracted out of the uninsured, the figure would be

substantially reduced. Another large component of the uninsured

are people under the age of 35 or so, who are very healthy and have

decided that they do not wish to fork out a chunk of their monthly

income for health coverage. Why should they when our permissive

society forces others to pick up their medical tab? This group of

the young uninsured by choice are much more interested in using

that money for making their monthly payment for their nice car,

having a cellphone with all the up-to-date bells and whistles, as

well as having satellite dish TV and buying DVD's of the most

current movies. In the current climate of our permissive culture,

in which few are ever forced to own up to their actions and

decisions, if a young uninsured citizen is in need of health

services, many automatically cry out that it must be given to them,

and the hospital and other patients will simply have to pay the

bill, because after all that is simply the kind hearted thing to

do, even if in the end a policy may result in the hospital having

to close its doors because it has gone bankrupt. Indeed, this is

what has happened to a number of hospitals in southern California

that have been inundated by illegal aliens who are required by law

to be treated.

What would happen if it were an established fact in our society

that if someone shows up at a hospital in need of care and has no

insurance coverage, services will be denied? Would most people not

organize their lives so as to make sure that they had at least some

form of health coverage? Politicians are constantly forcing us to

modify our lives and spending habits by taxing certain activities

and giving tax breaks for others. If the expectation just outlined

were to be part of our culture, young people might have to do

without their cherished celphone and all its costly features, or go

without having satellite dish TV, or not be able to keep adding to

their DVD collection of movies, but why should hospitals and their

other patients be forced to pay other people's bills when many of

them could afford health care if only they reconfigured their

lives?

If there still remained a considerable number of uninsured people

after we eliminate the illegal aliens and the self-indulgent young

from the equation, many things could be done far short of national

health care for everyone in order to make sure that these people

had affordable health care, and it would not require coming up with

a solution that is analogous to killing an ant with an atomic bomb.

Doctors and hospital staff are already groaning under all the

mandates imposed upon them by the goverment. What we need is less

government intrution, not more, and far more sensible and

intelligent solutions to target specific groups and their needs

rather than creating yet another enormously vast and inefficient

federal bureaucracy to try to dole out hhealth care to everyone.

If you are perfectly happy with the poor quality of education

regularly churned out by the public school system in the U.S., for

which the federal government bears a large share of the blame, then

you will love what the federal government will do to everyone's

health care if it is nationalized. Within a decade or two services

will become so degraded that many people will look back upon the

previous period as a golden age, but by then it will be too late,

because as history clearly demonstrates, once a huge government

bureaucracy is established, it is virtually impossible to do

anything to it other than to make minor modifications and

superficial reforms. If health care were to become the

responsibility of a federal program, it would constitute one of the

largest power grabs in U.S. history, because overnight the federal

government would be seizing control of about one-seventh of the

entire U.S. economy. Do not believe anything a politician says

about how much their nationalized health care plan is going to

cost. When was the last time that you heard of a federal program

coming in under budget and staying there? It never happens.

Feeding us such lies is a slick way of convincing some people that

it really will not cost all that much. In addition, these same

politicians insist that the program will be paid by going after big

rich corporations, as if the latter do not employ large numbers of

ordinary people whose jobs may be put in jeopardy by federal

confiscatory tax policies implemented to soak the rich. These

statements are nothing more than demagogery calculated to persuade

the gullible to get behind the idea, but then when the program is

established, and it is too late to reverse course, politicians will

shed crocodile tears in telling us how much more expensive it has

now become; and although they really hate to do so, they are going

to have to increase our taxes significantly to pay for it all. A

nationalized health program will soon begin to consume an

absolutely gigantic portion of the U.S. budget and will make it

very difficult for us to afford other things. No matter what a

politician may promise, taxes will have to be increased

significantly in order to pay for it. It will also place a heavier

burden upon employers; and all these increased expenses will soon

begin to result in slow economic growth generally. The program

will act as a sever choke hold around the neck of the capitalistic

goose that has been laying for us the golden eggs responsible for

the greatest economic system in world history. It will condemn the

U.S. to a stagnant economy similar to the United Kingdom. Small

businesses have long been the most important area fostering

economic growth in the U.S., but imposing larger costs upon them

will make it much harder for these businesses to come into being;

and others already in existence may have to close, because they

cannot afford the increased expenses; and others will have to lay

people off in order to economize. There will be very many adverse

economic consequences of nationalized health care, and of course,

no politician selling the idea will ever mention them, but that

assumes that they are even sufficiently educated in matters of

economics to realize that there will be such consequences. All

that they will do is paint such a rosy picture of the grass being

greener on the other side that many people, like dumb beasts, will

want to jump over the fence and get into that pasture where the

grass is supposed to be greener and tastier.

Given what you know about how politicians manage our tax dollars,

how well do you think that their nationalized health program will

spend our hard earned money? We already have one good example from

the Clinton administration. Indeed, how many people even remember

this? It serves as an excellent illustration of how short most

people's memories are, and how that fact is constantly being

exploited by politicians, because they can come up with one idea,

impliment a program, and have it function poorly, but since most

people forget such things, the same politicians can come right back

at us with their newest idea and program that functions just as

badly as their other one with no accountability ever being exacted

from the programs' proposers. But to return to the main subject,

when Hillary Clinton, the self-appointed and self-anointed expert

in health care, decided that the federal government must take over

the responsibility of having all school-age children immunized

against common childhood diseases, the federal government

established what manufacturers of vaccines could charge, but since

it provided the producers with virtually no profit margin, all of

them decided "why bother?" They simply stopped producing the

vaccines, and the federal government had to go abroad to the U.K.

to buy up millions of vaccines. Then what happened? it turned out

that many of the vaccines were defective and could not be used.

What a classic clusterfuck produced by well intentioned politicians

with no knowledge of how things work in the real economic world!

After leaving his career in politics, George McGovern, a leading

liberal U.S. senator from South Dakota who went down to the worst

electoral defeat as president in 1972, decided to establish in his

retirement a small bed and breakfast tourist business in the

Northeast. When he was confronted with all the regulations

required of him by the government, he was heard to remark that if

he had known this as a senator, his voting record would have been

much different. In fact, a large proportion of politicians at the

federal level have been nothing more but politicians for their

entire adult lives and have had little, if any, real-world

experience in organizing and operating a business enterprise. The

case of the vaccines during the Clinton administration is all too

typical of politicians in their arrogance, thinking that by their

laws and policies they can control fundamental market forces of the

economy, as if they could pass a law forbidding gravity to operate

in nature, or prohibiting tornados from occurring. Free market

forces will continue to operate, no matter what politicians in

Washington D.C. do; and if the latters' policies are in obvious

defiance of such irrepressible forces, the result will be like a

freight train smashing into a car parked on the railroad tracks;

and all the good intentions of the politicians, based upon faulty

economic logic, will be utterly destroyed. In the former Soviet

Union, where all aspects of the economy were controlled by the

government, everyone in theory had a job, so that unlike the evil

capitalist countries, the Soviet Union never suffered from

unemployment, and every worker received a pay-check. It did not

matter that much of the work being done was of dubious economic

value, as was the pay-checks doled out, but it at least allowed the

government to boast to the outside world that everyone was employed

and received a pay-check. In this supposed workers' paradise the

common joke among the general population was that "we pretend to

work, and they pretend to pay us."

Consider the following facts concerning national health care in

Canada and the United Kingdom, which the politicians are always

holding before us as the example that we backward citizens of the

U.S. should be following. Recently a survey in the U.K discovered

that six percent of it citizens were using glue and pliers to

administer their own dental care, because they could not be

scheduled to see a dentist to tend to their teeth. The N. H.S.

(Britain's National Health Service) also released a formal

pronouncement saying that they were incapable of giving all

pregnant women services for delivering their children, so taht

those who were not in immediate danger should seek out the services

of private midwives. The same N.H.S. also recently reported that

they could not keep all the hospitals equipped with clean bed

sheets. How is that for maintaining a sanitary environment?

Besides these clear illustrations of the N.H.S. to supply

everyone's needs, there are constantly coming into the news stories

of persons having to wait months or even years to receive needed

operations. In fact, the situation has become so severe in the

U.K. that another recent survey has reported that its citizens are

leaving in record numbers to travel abroad to find doctors to

service their needs. A few years ago a report was in the news

concerning Canada's system, which some U.S. politicians regard as

vastly superior to that in our lower 48 states. According to this

report, although it is illegal for private medical clinics to exist

in Canada, they were coming into being on a regular basis to

provide services that the state sponsored program was failing to

deliver; and even though such activity was illegal, the government

was doing nothing to stop it, because it realized that the

government system clearly needed help by such privately owned and

operated clinics.

Perhaps the most horrific story that has surfaced in the news

lately concerning the N.H.S. in the U.K. is the following. A man

had an accident resulting in his foot being broken. When he sought

to have it tended to through the N.H.S., he was denied treatment.

Why? He was a smoker, and the N.H.S. insisted that he stop smoking

as a condition for him receiving medical care. He replied that he

had in fact tried to stop, but he simply could not manage to do it.

This is a perfect illustration of how a nationalized system can

intrude itself into people's lives in all sorts of unwelcome and

oppressive ways. We have already seen in recent years in this

country how a large team of trial lawyers successfully sued the

tobacco companies by arguing that they owed the U.S. public

billions and billions of dollars for health care costs. Juries and

judges bought their argument, and the trial lawyers and state

governments enjoyed gigantic windfalls of cash forced out of the

tobacco industry. How much of that money was then spent on health

care? Very little. The issue of increasing numbers of people

being overweight has been in the news for months and months. If a

national health plan were created, what would stop a small number

of its zealous administrators from deciding that they needed to use

their coercive power to give or deny health care in order to force

people to go on diets, to exercise several times a week, and to

give up ice cream, doughnuts, candy bars, potato chips, etc., etc.,

etc.?

If health care is akin to a civil right, why isn't having daily

food to consume? We already do have various programs to provide

the needy with the means of buying food, but so far at least, we do

not have a nationalized grocery plan for all citizens. Using the

analogy of a nationalized health plan, why doesn't the government

simply nationalize all grocery stores and allow everyone to go in

to take what they want? Obviously, this would result in many

grocery stores going bankrupt and out of business. In addition, it

would give the government the power to dictate what people should

or should not eat. one can easily imagine a time when government

employees stand guard at what used to be the check-out lines, where

they oversee what we are taking out of the store; and their job is

to tell us, "you can't have that half gallon of ice cream. You

already look too fat to me. Instead, take this bag of carrots."

This may sound too strange to be believable, but is it? The record

of human history is quite clear in showing that the one thing that

bureaucracies are best at is perpetuating themselves and making

sure that they continue to grow and exercise more and more power.

In addition, of course, they are always very inefficient

economically and become increasingly costly as they grow in size.

Recently in California some politicians have come up with the idea

of having all thermostats in homes and businesses controlled from

a central authority that decides how warm or how cold the place

should be, so that the government can regulate people's energy

consumption.

A nationalized health plan in the U.S. would be a truly gigantic

step down the road of socialism from which it would be very hard to

retreat. Someone has said that communism is simply socialism in a

hurry: that is to say, whatever or whoever (and it might be

millions of ordinary people) stands in the way of establishing

communism is simply run over and destroyed, because the end in such

cases is regarded as justifying the means. Conversely, socialism

could be called communism in increments, communism on the

installment plan, or communism in slow motion.

I truly fear the establishment of nationalized health care in this

cuntry that I love so dearly, because I see it as undermining the

basic economic health of our society that has produced the largest

and most affluent middle class in all of human history. I really

dread to see the day when this begins to be eroded. I truly hope

that if or when that begins to happen, I will be dead and cannot

witness it. I am convinced that contrary to what the politicians

maintain, nationalized health care will be one of the worst things

ever to befall this nation. It is simply their most recent brand

of snake oil medicine that they are hawking to justify their

continued existence as people needing to be kept in power to solve

all our horrible problems to fix things even when they are not

really broken.

Besides causing economic ruin, national health care will result in

just the opposite of what the uninformed members of the public are

being told that it will accomplish. Rather than delivering good

health care to all, it will degrade the quality of health care for

almost everyone, as has been abundantly shown by the workings of

the systems in the U.K. and Canada, which, of course, U.S.

politicians and their fellow travelers in TV journalism are careful

to hide from us.

Finally, another national health care program that receives the

highest praise from these same U.S. politicians and journalists is,

of course, that of communist Cuba under the rule of that dictator

Fidel, whom many on the lunatic left in the U.S. worship as an

icon. We are told how wonderful health care is in that supposed

island utopia, where it is hard to buy almost anything, including

tooth paste, toilet paper, and female sanitary napkins. If their

system is so wonderful as the U.S. left are constantly telling us,

why isn't Cuba being plagued by illegal aliens wanting to get in?

Why instead are there so many illegal aliens flooding into this

country? There is the old adage that imitation is the sincerest

form of flattery. I have heard this adapted to be "immigration is

the sincerest form of flattery." I do not want to see a time when,

like in the present-day U.K., numerous citizens are leaving their

country to travel abroad to seek much needed medical care. Our

current system may not be perfect, because no human institution

ever is; but the health delivery system in the U.S. is outstanding

and is certainly not broken. it does not need to be fixed by a

gang of damn politicians in Washington D.C., who are so full of

good intentions, but whose knowledge of basic economics and history

is profound. When was the last time that they created a large

government program that really fixed a serious problem and did it

well without creating other unforeseen problems that enabled the

same politicians to create additional costly government programs as

remedies for the messes that the initial program created?

You can be sure that if politicians ever do succeed in persuading

enough of the U.S. public to go along with nationalized health

care, one feature of the program will be that all federal employees

(or at least all elected officials) are exempt from it, and that

there will be allowance made for a special group of clinics

(lavishly funded by our tax dollars, of course) whose sole function

will be to provide the politicians with the highest quality of

health care, while everyone else must settle for what they can

obtain from the Frankenstein that they have created and imposed

upon us.

[Stussy88 0]

Well said indeed.

You might also want to mention our (UK) cancer survival rates are below those in Eastern Europe, you can't see a doctor in a surgery as they work 9-5 Monday to Friday and regulation means you have to register at your nearest one, so if you actually work for a living, forget it, it's good for welfare moochers only. You might also want to mention the joys of healthcare tourism, whereby illegals decide that free healthcare is a good incentive to break the law, so they simply enter the UK illegally and pitch up at hospitals and demand treatment. If it is ever discovered they are illegal, the media runs a huge "hearts and flowers" campaign about how it is inhuman to deny treatment.

Nurses know they are more or less unsackable and their salary does not depend on performance, so you might imagine how attentive they are; in the casualty department (i.e. the ER) you can routinely expect waits of four hours plus before you see a doctor, and if you don't like it, tough, you still have to pay for it, and the doctor will often look on wikipedia to diagnose you, but then he's 3 weeks out of med school and unsupervised.

Then there is the joy of hospital acquired infections, currently top of the pops MRSA, but coming up fast on the rail C-difficile, no BUPA (i.e. UK private hospitals) have such infections, more or less all state one do and they kill thousands every year. This passes more or less unremarked upon. Catering is of such low quality that the elderly often don't eat when in hospital and weaken and die as a result.

If you don't like it and subscribe to a private provider, you don't get a tax break, so use the system or not, you pay for it.

My wife's experience two years ago was so poor, that I cleaned the private room in the NHS hospital she was in myself daily despite the protestations (!) of the staff, took all her food in, and had to demand on pain of legal action to see the consultant not the aforesaid doctor 3 weeks out of med school, when she was in severe pain, after several requests, I had to literally frog-march a nurse to her bed to adminster pain relief medication, oh yes, and as the final insult, after online searches of what drugs she required, I stopped a mis-prescription by questioning why drug A was being prescribed when best practice prescribed drug B.

Socialised medicine is an expensive disaster, take it from one who suffered from it.

For a more detailed expose if you are interested in the unfolding disaster, check out the book "The welfare state we are in" by James Bartholomew. It is the most comprehensive destruction of the UK welfare state I have ever read.

[JRoberts 0]

Thank you for this information-I will pass it along to Dr. Forsythe.

And I am very sorry to hear about your wife and the experience she underwent .

[Joshua_Mayer 0]

Brilliant analysis.

One things that always baffled me about the leftist policy is they say the socialized medicine would reduce the price of health care. HOW COULD THAT POSSIBILY BE? Do they not understand anything about supply and demand? When you pay for all of the consumer's trips to the doctors office, then they will go as often as they want, making the amount in which they go sky high. In order for a hospital to pay of these additional charges, they will have to increase the price even more! So either they will have to limit the quantity of people whom receive health care, or they will have to raise taxes to a unreasonable level.

I like the republican plan a lot better. Make a health savings account that is tax free, so people will have to deal with their own money and will buy only as much as they need, like every good in the market.

[Joshua_Mayer 0]

I think my favorite part of that essay (by the way) is the part where completely and utterly bashed government spending.

[Carlos 0]

Stussy, thank you for providing your account of the UK's socialized healthcare.

[Arnold 0]

If we are smart enough to go to the moon, there is no excuse for advocates to ignore the most basic law of economics.

Without the market to bring supply and demand into balance, there is only one other option -- Rationing! ..... by the Cretins who led everyone to believe they had the answer.

The evidence for this is as plain to see, as was the differences on each side of the Berlin Wall. This evasion is pure evil.

[Joshua_Mayer 0]

If we are smart enough to go to the moon, there is no excuse for advocates to ignore the most basic law of economics.

Without the market to bring supply and demand into balance, there is only one other option -- Rationing! ..... by the Cretins who led everyone to believe they had the answer.

The evidence for this is as plain to see, as was the differences on each side of the Berlin Wall. This evasion is pure evil.

One of the things I have noticed most about the left is their blatant disregard of facts! They have this great ability of ignoring everything that is happening around them and just use either skewed facts or no facts at all.

[Stussy88 0]

Brilliant analysis.

One things that always baffled me about the leftist policy is they say the socialized medicine would reduce the price of health care. HOW COULD THAT POSSIBILY BE? Do they not understand anything about supply and demand? When you pay for all of the consumer's trips to the doctors office, then they will go as often as they want, making the amount in which they go sky high. In order for a hospital to pay of these additional charges, they will have to increase the price even more! So either they will have to limit the quantity of people whom receive health care, or they will have to raise taxes to a unreasonable level.

I like the republican plan a lot better. Make a health savings account that is tax free, so people will have to deal with their own money and will buy only as much as they need, like every good in the market.

British lefties (and possibly others) on socialised healthcare argue the following

1. Socialised providers don’t need to make profits therefore all the money can be spent on patient care and that has to be better

2. Anyway it’s morally wrong to make money from sick people, so a socialised provider is the moral as well as the practical thing to do

You may find the following counterpoints useful

1. The state versus private producer theory was tested to destruction in East and West Germany. You had the same people, with a similar climate, geographical position, culture, and starting point, producing cars. West German companies produced Mercedes, VW’s Audi, BMW and Porsche, East German produced the Trabant. (Google it, it is a hilarious ‘car’).

Ask the lefties why the Trabant wasn’t much better since they didn’t need to make profits and all the money could be spent on producing the best possible car? Ask them why they want the same system that produced the Trabant to replace the system that produced the Mercedes.

2. Since it’s apparently immoral to make money from healthcare, presumably they think it’s okay to steal the drugs pharmaceutical companies provide, not pay for scanners, computers, heart monitors, operating equipment etc etc, or electricity, or staff salaries since nurses are by definition profiting from the sick?

The ‘thinking’ on this is all over the place, and every time a problem comes to light, guess what, more money through more taxes will solve it. The NHS is apparently the second biggest employer in the world (after Indian railways, though I think the Chinese red army must be up there somewhere?), people in the UK are so hypnotised by it, that no politician dare say “Look, this is bloody stupid” we are wedded to this vast behemoth for ever more. You needn’t be.

[Tito 0]

The latest call in the UK is for "smoking permits", purchased for £10 from the government, they will enable you to buy and use cigarettes.

The state-run NHS could be left with the power to retract and refuse smoking permits, to he pregnant and the sick.

Socialism is bloody dangerous.

[Joshua_Mayer 0]

Brilliant analysis.

One things that always baffled me about the leftist policy is they say the socialized medicine would reduce the price of health care. HOW COULD THAT POSSIBILY BE? Do they not understand anything about supply and demand? When you pay for all of the consumer's trips to the doctors office, then they will go as often as they want, making the amount in which they go sky high. In order for a hospital to pay of these additional charges, they will have to increase the price even more! So either they will have to limit the quantity of people whom receive health care, or they will have to raise taxes to a unreasonable level.

I like the republican plan a lot better. Make a health savings account that is tax free, so people will have to deal with their own money and will buy only as much as they need, like every good in the market.

British lefties (and possibly others) on socialised healthcare argue the following

1. Socialised providers don’t need to make profits therefore all the money can be spent on patient care and that has to be better

2. Anyway it’s morally wrong to make money from sick people, so a socialised provider is the moral as well as the practical thing to do

You may find the following counterpoints useful

1. The state versus private producer theory was tested to destruction in East and West Germany. You had the same people, with a similar climate, geographical position, culture, and starting point, producing cars. West German companies produced Mercedes, VW’s Audi, BMW and Porsche, East German produced the Trabant. (Google it, it is a hilarious ‘car’).

Ask the lefties why the Trabant wasn’t much better since they didn’t need to make profits and all the money could be spent on producing the best possible car? Ask them why they want the same system that produced the Trabant to replace the system that produced the Mercedes.

2. Since it’s apparently immoral to make money from healthcare, presumably they think it’s okay to steal the drugs pharmaceutical companies provide, not pay for scanners, computers, heart monitors, operating equipment etc etc, or electricity, or staff salaries since nurses are by definition profiting from the sick?

The ‘thinking’ on this is all over the place, and every time a problem comes to light, guess what, more money through more taxes will solve it. The NHS is apparently the second biggest employer in the world (after Indian railways, though I think the Chinese red army must be up there somewhere?), people in the UK are so hypnotised by it, that no politician dare say “Look, this is bloody stupid” we are wedded to this vast behemoth for ever more. You needn’t be.

Thank you for the historical back-up. History always helps improve every argument.

[Stussy88 0]

The latest call in the UK is for "smoking permits", purchased for £10 from the government, they will enable you to buy and use cigarettes.

The state-run NHS could be left with the power to retract and refuse smoking permits, to he pregnant and the sick.

Socialism is bloody dangerous.

Setting aside the obvious issues about enforceability, it has been mentioned in the thread of guns, that when something requires a permit, it ceases to be a right. Ss precendents go, this one could be a doozy. If this is accepted, why not permits to drink alcohol, permits to eat fatty food, permits to avoid exercise, permits to buy fatty food. Imagine the clerk in the store saying "Sorry sir, your permit doesn't entitle you to buy this pizza and beer, how about some yummy broccoli and skimmed milk"

Freedom?

[Tito 0]

The latest call in the UK is for "smoking permits", purchased for £10 from the government, they will enable you to buy and use cigarettes.

The state-run NHS could be left with the power to retract and refuse smoking permits, to he pregnant and the sick.

Socialism is bloody dangerous.

Setting aside the obvious issues about enforceability, it has been mentioned in the thread of guns, that when something requires a permit, it ceases to be a right. Ss precendents go, this one could be a doozy. If this is accepted, why not permits to drink alcohol, permits to eat fatty food, permits to avoid exercise, permits to buy fatty food. Imagine the clerk in the store saying "Sorry sir, your permit doesn't entitle you to buy this pizza and beer, how about some yummy broccoli and skimmed milk"

Freedom?

Would you believe it, that proposal coupled with enforced exercise at work, is being branded as "Libertarian Paternalism"

...Right.

[Stussy88 0]

The latest call in the UK is for "smoking permits", purchased for £10 from the government, they will enable you to buy and use cigarettes.

The state-run NHS could be left with the power to retract and refuse smoking permits, to he pregnant and the sick.

Socialism is bloody dangerous.

Setting aside the obvious issues about enforceability, it has been mentioned in the thread of guns, that when something requires a permit, it ceases to be a right. Ss precendents go, this one could be a doozy. If this is accepted, why not permits to drink alcohol, permits to eat fatty food, permits to avoid exercise, permits to buy fatty food. Imagine the clerk in the store saying "Sorry sir, your permit doesn't entitle you to buy this pizza and beer, how about some yummy broccoli and skimmed milk"

Freedom?

Would you believe it, that proposal coupled with enforced exercise at work, is being branded as "Libertarian Paternalism"

...Right.

Actually I probably would, it's a kind of liberal doublespeak anti-concept which they love.

Peter Tatchell (yes him!) describes himself these days as a libertarian. Either he has undergone the biggest transformation since Paul of Tarsus, or he does not understand that thinking it's okay to let people sleep with anyone they like of any age or gender, whilst simultaneously slamming the collective government orthodoxy down their throats (pardon the pun) does not a libertarian make.