Yes, there are all sorts of concerns, when it comes to government-managed health care. There are privacy issues. There are tax issues. There are wait period issues. Conspiracy theories about the government telling you how to eat and what to weigh tends not to be one of them, though.

How do I come to that conclusion? Well, look at all the other developed nations that have universal health care. They have a plethora of problems themselves (different to our own), but most certainly none of them is that the government is making them eat extra carrots and peas at the dinner table, to fight obesity or take away someone’s right to be a lard butt.

My point isn’t to rag on the writing here too much, particularly since much of it is just pasted from other sources, but to say you can argue against public health care for many good, logical reasons that have ample statistical and historical data to support them. Talking about the government infringing upon the “right to be chubby” probably isn’t one of those well-documented reasons.

On a side note, there is a contradiction here. To believe in highly privatized and libertarian rights of “anything goes,” you must also believe that a lot of, for example, employers have a right to discriminate against obese individuals, as obesity is often something that can be managed and slowly but surely reversed. For most, it is not an ailment we are born with, even in those who are with some unlucky genes. Wanting the government to protect the rights of the obese is asking for a type of affirmative action, I’m afraid.

I’ll be honest here. If there’s any manual labor involved in a job I’m hiring for, I’m probably going to choose the fitter candidate for the job; or, if I have two workers, one who is fit and the other who is not, I may consider paying more to the (likely) more productive, fitter one. It’s a hard pill for obese individuals to swallow, but there is a reason some of this discrimination exists, and it’s based on logic, not malice.

I just thought that was worth mentioning, because I find it highly ironic that anyone could want the government to stay out of health-related affairs, yet want “anti-weight bias laws.” Don’t think we can really have the cake and eat it too–no puns intended, not really…

This is where the modern definition of “civil rights” bumps up against individual liberty. The two are completely different. The gov’t is meant to protect your individual rights as defined in the Constitution, not create a nanny state to protect people from themselves.

As for government-run health care…that will be an atrocity if it’s ever pushed through by the Dems…