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But it isn't an outright ban. You're not banned from buying sodas, period. You're simply limited in the choices you have under certain cir stances (ie: it doesn't apply to purchases you make in a supermarket).
That's not happening. As a matter of fact, since StRonnie, the private sector (at least hospitals) cannot refuse treatment to patients.
So let's start from there. Hospitals/doctors have to treat patients no matter what and that's not going away. How do you deal with the excesses?
Okay, under the current system (which isn't changing), how do you put the onus on the offenders?
But it isn't an outright ban. You're not banned from buying sodas, period. You're simply limited in the choices you have under certain cir stances (ie: it doesn't apply to purchases you make in a supermarket).
"how do you put the onus on the offenders?"
with hard core medicare for all public option, you set up a national health testing system where healthy people get a discount when their health profile is "healthy", and has to be hard numbers. iow, rather than penalizing unhealthy people with higher premiums (a malus), one rewards people (a bonus) with lower premiums. The "burden" is on the people to keep the health profile (their health) in good shape. I don't think any new science is necessary. As always, the problem is detecting people who cheat and people who have genetic, unmodifiably bad health profiles.
I know what it is. A partial ban is not creative either. Personally, i think it's an affront to personal liberty. If i want to get fat and die then so be it. I choose not to but personal liberty is important to me.
and then they take them to NY where they're the big kid on the block and can bully their defenseless neighbors around them. the cities with gun bans like NY and Chicago all have ridiculously high crime rates..even more than your average gun friendly big cities. there have been huge discussions and studies on this subject since long before you ever joined the party, and it's been conclusively proven that guns make people safer. Gary Kleck and John Lott put together 2 of the biggest and most comprehensive if you want to take a look at their work..it pretty much put the gun control debates to bed years ago.
Great Britain also banned guns some years back and it was the same result. Their violent crime rates have climbed ever since and their violent crime per capita dwarfs that of gun friendly US. A lot of knife muggings and stuff there.
The problem is seemingly that people want to get fat and not die. And so the problem stops being strictly a personal problem. And we're not even talking a minority here.
Do you honestly believe that people don't realize they are getting fat?
You're having your cake and eating it too. You cannot pose change then say "with the current system". You're limiting the answers to the initial suggestion. What you are really asking is "which is easier to change?"
Sure it's easier to take away our rights, but it doesn't address the problem, which is that we have adopted a bull stance that says "everyone deserves healthcare". Everyone certainly does not. When you live like everyone does, you already lost.
^ So...now what are you gonna do to help yourself....
they realize it, but they don't care, really, not enough to learn how to feed themselves.
then there is huge scam of the weight-loss, exercise equipment industries.
I disagree. It's simply a different challenge with the cards you're dealt with. You're basically telling me the only solution is to re-shuffle the deck, but realistically that's not possible. I'm not even saying the soda ban is the right idea, just an attempt to deal with the issue within the system instead of just folding and keep on getting the ty hand.
Disagree here too. It isn't whether "everyone deserves healthcare" or not. A lot of these people don't really have serious health problems until they're 60+... by that time, the damage is already done. The question is how do you address the problem way before then.
If the majority wants to be fat then so be it. What do you think of the countries drug policy?
The first thing you do is decide what you really are prepared to do and what you expect from it. If you are prepared to only enact placebo legislation that's not too overtly restrictive, you can do that but all you're going to get from it is annoying a few people. You're pissing on a forest fire thinking maybe someone will realize your intent and everyone will begin to participate. If you're pragmatic, you realize you're just pissing on a fire. You realize that your soda restrictions are just the beginning of an off ramp for our freedoms. You will have to erode the rights one by one until you damn near totally control the lives of humans before you can have any control over your health care costs when they get older.
Or you can look at it from a different perspective; let them die before they reach that age. Stop bumping them along with high cost procedures and treatments when they've ed up their lives already. I am not talking about someone with an obscure cancer that can be esoterically traced to some food coloring from things they ate 40 years ago. I am talking about emphysema from 40 years of 3 packs a day, or from heart problems because their cholesterol is 350 and instead of proper diet and exercise, they elect the confirmation bias of "well, the research is inconclusive" or "I feel ok, why take these pills or why eat that ty salad when I really want that 18 ounce steak and a pint of ice cream?"
Our lives have a limited amount of useage available. We can speed that up or slow it down at a cost, and that cost is either felt by the individual if the form of sacrifices and exertions that they don't want to make, or it's felt by a collective of society in the form of taxes that put a greater amount of medical resources toward saving/improving one person than that one person otherwise deserves. If they are trying and cannot get there, if they have genetic issues, if they have conditions that are not their fault most of the time (born diabetic, for example), that's different. If they are born healthy and by age 50 they are 300lbs and need more medical care than their fair share, they do without. I realize anyone' suggesting that we abandon people who've abandoned themselves might one day regret it, but if we know that will happen, we are more apt to not get there.
You cannot simply change a few things like how much soda can be put in a cup at a fast food restaurant and actually change anything, but what you would have done is satisfied the feeling that you need to do something, that's why it's called a placebo.
Then how is that a corporate issue? Why don't you hold people personally accountable? It seems like a liberal tenet that there's always someone else to blame for the effects of what we decide to do.
Weight loss would be pointless if you weren't overweight. You're just looking for an easier to see, harder to effect target.
then there is huge scam of the weight-loss, exercise equipment industries.
I agree with decriminalizing personal consumption. I would still leave certain penalties for cases like driving under the influence, where they could hurt other people, but if they want to themselves at home, then that's their problem.
Sometimes it isn't what you're "prepared to do", IMO. It's what you do within the limits you have. And I think this is the situation we're finding ourselves in right now. I agree to an extent that perhaps this soda baloney is just that, baloney. But then the question remains, is it worse than doing nothing? I respect your opinion that it is. I just simply think we're going to have to address this at one point or another, and we're going to have to do it much earlier than when people are 50+. Simply because them dying isn't stopping a brand new generation from following the same path.
Well, that sounds more like something that would need to be addressed within the education realm.
I just don't think this does anything to address the issue. I mean, right now people of any age that are morbidly obese won't receive kidney or pancreas transplants. A lot of them simply cannot survive surgery as it is. Has it been an effective deterrent? Not really. I understand you're a rational person, that by taking care of yourself early, you can prolong your life. But seemingly a lot of these people are not, and so the question becomes how do you knock some common sense into generation after generation that apparently either don't get the message or don't want to.
Well, in all honesty, I think this is one of those situations where "don't knock it till you tried it". If anything, this is a State policy, which IMO is the place where you test this kind of policies. I think it would've been much worse if this was a federal policy.
Who gives a , people who are morbidly obese (unless they have small control over their conditions) deserve what they have coming to them if they never change for themselves. Drinking slightly less soda or eating McDonalds 3 times instead of 5 per week isn't going to cut it. I'd bet most people only give half or quarter-assed efforts in actually improving their lives while expecting decent results. Bottom line is it's not the government's job to protect an individual itself. If your family is a family of fat s and that's all you've ever known and you've never done much to change that into your adolescent and adult years, boo hoo.
I also respect the side you take on this issue...the at ude of "well it might as well try something else because there's not much of an opportunity cost". I think it's all a waste of time in the end. If you think about it there's a huge amount of things that are detrimental to an individual, and I don't think the government aught to use society's resources/taxes to protect one from oneself. A more high-taxing, big federal gov country can probably work much better under a smaller, more geneous country. However, the US is extremely big population wise and extremely diverse in every single way. Big federal government focusing on these issues will inevitably be inefficient and unfair.
Political decisions can't change a culture of a country, the culture generally has to change first with politics working retroactively. A lot of health issues that we have in the US are probably largely due to years of living in excess. In the past couple of decades the US economy has lead the world, large middle and upper middle classes, and ton of people used to having relatively large incomes compared to relatively small expenses and living in excess. People aren't used to limiting themselves, living in moderation. Whether it's food, housing, whatever.
Nobody is saying they don't deserve what's coming to them, that's a moot point. The problem is that they don't get what they deserve largely before they're 50+, which then becomes our problem since we're footing the bill, plus well after they raised another generation that's fairly careless about taking care of their bodies (which is the actual problem).
And this is the conundrum, IMO. The cultural change has to come. The question is how (or better yet, why) is it going to come. And whether there should be a system of incentives or deterrents to help it along.
BTW, I don't necessarily agree that policy can't change culture. The cigarette industry is perhaps a good example where nazi-like policies made an important dent. Obviously, it's not exactly apples-to-apples, but I think as a general example it applies.
I agree, but should we then also ban all fast food and ban mothers feeding their children daily 5 fatty-course dinners? Or should we force fast food joints to limit how much food and how often an obese person can buy their food? Same for alcohol? Cigarettes? My point is there are so many things that are really bad for you that are consumed by way too many people with way too high frequency, and large sodas probably account for less than half a percent of the problem. To realistically solve these problems, we would need to become pretty socialist. Which obviously can never work in a country like the US.
Why even begin to focus time and money on these issues that will take us nowhere?
I get your at ude on the subject but don't see it amounting to anything.
I think with any of these health issues (obesity, fast food, drugs), the best thing is a strong focus on education, done properly, and at the right ages. More focus on true education rather than "don't do drugs because...well because they're bad!" Probably every kid in the US has been told to not do drugs, and most probably don't fully understand the long term effects enough to a point where for many people it's too late. I'm just picking drugs as an example but I think our education should aim to become more straightforward, hit kids and young adults with the science behind these things and if done in the right way would probably work better.
One thing to me has become clear over the years: just saying "NO!" and attempting to limit access...does not limit access, and does not prevent people from doing whatever it is you are trying to avoid them doing.
Well, I think this particular "ban" is fairly mild anyway you look at it. It's not enforceable at home, and there's really no limit in how much you can purchase. I see it more addresses towards what the pricing structure is for the most part, where a 10 oz drink is $1, a 16 oz drink is $1.20 and you can "super size it" to 32 oz for another 5c ($1.25). I suspect a lot of people just pick the 32 oz because they think they're getting a good deal for "just 5c" (not empirical, tbh, so don't ask. But I trust fast food places know what they're doing with their pricing).
Well, this is another at ude I don't agree with. Look, if it doesn't work and does nothing, there will be backslash and it will just go away. IMO, the state is the perfect place to try this. Like Massachusetts was the right place to try out Barry/Mitt care.
I agree about the education aspect.
What's the cost comparison of eating healthy and eating fast food? That could be a good indicator on why so people are fat in America. And another thing that ignorant possibly bigoted people don't realize is that sometimes being fat is in your genes. People that have the fatness in their genes already have two strikes against them because they're already fat and it's in their genes which means losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight will be difficult. Honestly, I would fully support gene modification if there was a guarantee that the fatness gene could be removed from babies and that no physical, emotional, mental, and other health problems would happen.
I think that's actually part of the current problem, tbh. The expectation that the magic pill/exotic diet/gastric surgery/new gene therapy are going to be there and are going to fix the problem. Fact is, it rarely works unless you're set to address the problem.
gaycob has no sympathy whatsoever for gay people who are born with a predisposed attraction to the same sex yet has tons of sympathy for fatasses who eat unhealthy? No one is born morbidly obese, and there aren't "fat genes" that make it impossible to be skinn. Some people have slower metabolisms, just like some people have less mental capacity and weaker analytical skills they need to make up for with a strong work ethic.
Nice try but no. I may not be the spokesperson or a cheerleader for gay rights but it's not common sense that they have a strike against them. I mean it sucks if you are gay and live in America because a lot of people will give you for it.
For fatness, most people would agree with me on the gene modification process to rid the world of the fatness gene. No one wants their kid to be fat because let's be honest, being fat is viewed as being less. If you are fat in America, society views you as less.
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