Salt Restrictions are Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Browsing the news recently, I came across this article :
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,591285,00.html

Anyone who has been paying attention for the last few years had to expect that once the government is responsible for paying your health care costs, your lifestyle (in all respects that affect your health) becomes a public affair. That’s the rub. I tried to figure a personal behavior of mine or a decision I make that has no impact on my health (and thus the Public Treasury). I was unsuccessful.

Limitations on salt make absolute sense to me (assuming the government owns me, and I just rent my body for the period that I am alive). One paragraph from the article stands out: “U.S. researchers said in a recent study that working with the food industry to cut salt intake by nearly 10 percent could prevent hundreds of thousands of heart attacks and strokes over several decades and save the U.S. Government $32 billion in health care costs.“ How can me living a healthier (in these researchers’ opinion) lifestyle cause the U.S. Government to save health care expenses? It’s very simple, they are paying for my health care (under Obamacare). Indeed, without some sort of socialized medicine, no controls on your behavior can be justified fiscally.

Since we have established the fact that most civil liberties infractions (controls on your personal behavior that is harmful to no one but yourself) are justified to lower costs to the public, lets add that we have had a huge component of socialized medicine even before Obamacare. Examples of this include, but are not limited to: Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare part D, Guaranteed emergency room care, etc… Indeed, before Obamacare, fully 50% of medical care was at government expense. Without these programs, someones health would be there own business. Not one cent would come from my tax dollars to pay for cancer treatment for a smoker. No money would be spent out of the public coffers to pay for surgery for motorcyclers who were too stupid to wear their helmets.

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Tags: Regulation, Restriction, Salt