Liberal: Make the Fat People Pay for Everyone’s Healthcare

A July 25 L.A. Times blog piece is a perfect example of the anti-liberty left that I have talked about previously, those who would dictate from government on high how we are to lead our lives in order to deserve the government healthcare that we all pay our taxes to provide “for free” to everyone. For the Times, Melissa Healy is positing that we should tax fat people to pay for Obamacare because of the “obesity epidemic” that is driving up medical costs.

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So, if Healy had her way, we’d have the government telling us what we are allowed to eat in order to deserve healthcare. Of course, I am sure that this rather fascistic health nut would also tell you with a serious face that healthcare is a “right,” too. So, how might she reconcile the “right” to healthcare to a fascistic controlling of people’s lives in order to deserve the benefit of that healthcare? She has probably never even thought of the question, sadly. So let me delineate the liberal dilemma. The left keeps saying that people have a “right” to healthcare. Fine. Let’s pretend for a moment that this absurd claim is logical and good. But first we have to know what a “right” is. By definition we find that a right is something that we are entitled to, something that no one, not even government, can keep us from enjoying. OK? Great. So, now we’ve decided that healthcare is a right. No one can deprive us of healthcare. And we are now about to require government to pay for it so that everyone can get healthcare “for free” so that our right to it is easier to fulfill. OK. Great. So here is the dilemma: if we all have a right to healthcare and no one, not even government may keep us from it…so… um… HOW can government regulate it? After all, with government in charge, we have to come up with rules on how it is doled out, who and how it is paid for, when it is available, and all that. That’s what government does, of course. But isn’t healthcare a right? How can government deny us any kind of healthcare that we want? If it’s a right, shouldn’t we get what ever we want when ever we want it? It’s a right, ya know? Who is the government to tell us what we are allowed to have and when we are allowed to have it? Ah, but we can’t expect this can we? Somehow there will always be rules or roadblocks set up to our full access won’t there? In the end, there’s no denying that government will be forced to tell us when and how we are “allowed” to exercise our right to healthcare. This means that healthcare cannot possibly be considered a right because government can deprive us of it. But, let’s get back to our L.A. Times blogger, Healy. You see, according to this little health Nazi, your “right” to healthcare should be further hampered if you happen to be a bit over weight. If you don’t fit her beau ideal of the perfect body, you should be punished by extreme taxes or reduced options in healthcare. If you refuse to follow the government program, healthcare denied. So much for a right to healthcare. And so much for personal liberty. Oh, I can hear the criticism of my points thus far, for sure. This is only the opinion of one anti-liberty, health nut, many will say. Who cares that some goof at the L.A. Times wants to tax the fat people. It’ll never happen. Don’t worry. Smile, be happy. The problem with that dismissive attitude is that it ignores how many thousands of nuts like Melissa Healy are really out there. And they aren’t just sitting in cubicles at some failing newspaper. They are in universities and non-governmental agencies. They are in the UN and the EU. They sit as advisors to politicians around the world whispering their anti-liberty sweet nothings into the ears of the powerful. Telling them, “let’s just take away a little bit of liberty from the mindless masses. It’s for the greater good, don’t you know?” And they are listened to. Besides, it only takes one little politician to take the opportunity to slip in a bit of language into any unassociated bill to have it suddenly come down on all of us. Any federal politician could slip the tax people tax into a military appropriations bill, or surreptitiously add it to a welfare bill, a workers act, or some other bit of legislation. Bad ideas never die in Washington. They just sit in wait until they can be hidden in something else.