The title of an article on Slate.com, my favorite on-line mag. Subtitle, “Congress toys with a silly plan to make Americans lose weight.” Last line on page 1, “OK, what’s so bad about penalizing workers for being fat?”
I write a lot of book reviews and I always avoid reading other reviews of the book I’m working on until I’ve written my own because I don’t want to be influenced by anyone else’s analysis.
Similarly, beyond the title, subtitle, and one sentence, I didn’t read the article so that I could weigh in on it independently. Pun intended.
One of my close friends that I run with often complains that the two of us don’t get a health care discount despite our exercise regimen. Instead of penalizing any group of people, why not just reward individuals committed to a healthy lifestyle? Wouldn’t an economist argue though that’s a “passive penalty” of sorts on sedentary folks? It’s like giving some high schoolers “good grade discounts” on their car insurance. That means insurance companies have to collect more premiums from other students.
Passive “sorry you don’t get the discount” penalties seem much more palatable than singling out heavy people who have to deal with ample discrimination already. What’s heavy anyways? You can forget the government’s body index matrix unless you’re content with over half the population being overweight.
Another complication, how do insurers accurately assess who is committed to an exercise regimen, is fit, and deserves a discount? I can see it now, a national health care 10k every July 1st. Every minute you run under one hour, you get a percentage discount. So run a 45:00 10k and receive a 15% discount.
I’m more in favor of user taxes. Tax the crap out of cigarettes, Big Macs, cinnabuns, and even soda. Just stay away from my chocolate milk.
Pressing Pause 
Was your, “…penalties seem much more palatable…” pun intended or not?
BTW, Sin taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, and chocolate milk don’t work except for collecting more taxes, which is why Ds like them so much. They are self perpetuating. They don’t improve lifestyles, and generate more tax revenue to support the poor choices. Consumption doesn’t decrease because people are addicted. They instead buy less potatoes and lettuce for their kids and keep buying chocolate milk and cigarettes for themselves. They resort to criminal activity to obtain their alcohol and dark liquids and switch to non-taxed sins like illicit drugs and popcorn. How about trying this? THE GOVERNMENT ACTUALLY CONSIDERS SPENDING LESS MONEY! Waiting for the Arnis rebuttal….
That pun was inadvertent, good catch. Interesting point. Makes sense for addictive things like cigarettes, but I’m more skeptical about high fat foods. One can like Whoppers, but can one be addicted to them? And quit including chocolate milk in the list; I told you, it receives a special dispensation. Agreed that government spending is out of control, but in the case of rising health care costs private insurance companies and private health practices bare most of the burden don’t they? We don’t have a government run health care program. . . yet. :) By the way, Maureen Dowd took a shot at you and your fellow Peleton Oners in today’s NYT column on Rush Limbaugh.