NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1709882,00.html

Since keeping old people alive is really expensive, and obese people (and smokers) don't live as long as thinner, healthier people, we can save money on healthcare by encouraging obesity.

So, that Golden Syrup Cake did me some good after all.

Why not just encourage suicide?

Hey, or we could just kill everyone. That would save money on health care, too.

Loss of a life is not comparable to the money saved on healthcare by their absence. It's sick and stinks of eugenics.

Why not just encourage suicide?
Why not encourage suicide? I've always wondered why people think suicide is bad.

After all, it's your life. Individual freedomm should permit you to leave it whenever you're done.

Hey, or we could just kill everyone. That would save money on health care, too.
But then you'd be actively forcing the choice upon them. That's a difference in kind.

Why not encourage suicide? I've always wondered why people think suicide is bad.

After all, it's your life. Individual freedomm should permit you to leave it whenever you're done.Whether or not that's what individual freedom says, not all freedoms need to be encouraged.

Why not encourage suicide? I've always wondered why people think suicide is bad.

After all, it's your life. Individual freedomm should permit you to leave it whenever you're done.

Well, since mental illness is a large factor in many suicides, is it really an exercise of free will, or is it a symptom?

Or when suicide is an escape mechanism from a horrific living situation, I'm not certain it's really an exercise of free will when the only choices are a) staying in the horrific living situation and b) killing yourself.

Also, not actively preventing suicide is a little different than encouraging it.

Well the US wont have any problems with universal health care then since we're all so fat.

Loss of a life is not comparable to the money saved on healthcare by their absence. It's sick and stinks of eugenics.

Why is eugenics a bad thing again?

Well, since mental illness is a large factor in many suicides, is it really an exercise of free will, or is it a symptom?

Or when suicide is an escape mechanism from a horrific living situation, I'm not certain it's really an exercise of free will when the only choices are a) staying in the horrific living situation and b) killing yourself.

Also, not actively preventing suicide is a little different than encouraging it.

Not to mention that you're likely fucking up the lives of all the relatives and friends of the suicidal person by encouraging them to commit suicide.

Because we can never be sure of the motivations of the people who have the power to enact eugenics policies. It's the ultimate slippery slope, and the ultimate expression of power over human beings.Not to mention that eugenics policies can't be proven to be the best policies that could be enacted.

Why is eugenics a bad thing again?

Because we can never be sure of the motivations of the people who have the power to enact eugenics policies. It's the ultimate slippery slope, and the ultimate expression of power over human beings.

Eugenics is great. We can breed out all the modern diseases and birth defects; like questioning authority for example. Yay Eugenics! :D

And we can finally isolate and destroy the Jew gene!

Why is eugenics a bad thing again?

Ah i know this one, it's like the Democratic version of the Nazi holocaust, but it's advised by medical experts, where before and after world war two, hundreds of thousands of people were put to death for being "feeble minded", in many countries including, many European countries and some states in the US. Sort of like voluntary Euthanasia, which can lead to involuntary Euthanasia and so on till you get to Nazi Germany.

As for the main topic, if you accept that it's cheaper to care for obese people, it doesn't necessarily follow that you should make all people obese. The Ought/Is gap taking a fact and saying it should be done is a fallacy.

I don't care if it's more expensive for me to live healthier i'd rather that than live a limited lifestyle and social exclusion.

Ah here it is.
"Although Nazi Germany made by far the most murderous use of eugenic policies, it should be remembered that in the twentieth century, eugenics-often described as 'population policies'-were also used in several other European countries and the USA against particular sections of the population, notably the disabled. These policies mostly took the form of the compulsary sterilization of 'feeble-minded' women. Racism led to black women being grossly over-represented among 60,000 people forcibly sterilized in several US states between 1907 and 1960. In Scandinavia, political leaders and geneticists adopted policies for compulsary sterilization because they were concerned that the emerging welfare state would encourage the 'unfit' to reproduce and would therefore reduce the quality of the 'national stock'. In Sweden alone, 63,000 people, 90 per cent of them women, were sterilized between 1934 and 1975. Norway, a much smaller country, sterilized 48,000 people in the same period. British and Dutch medical experts and policy-makers, by contrast, adopted voluntary sterilization, together with the mass institutionalization and segregation of the 'feeble minded' (Rose 1999)."

Anthony Giddens, 2006 5th edition, Sociology. Great Britain: Polity Press
(Page 263 column 2, Para 2)
I was reminded of that when i read your post, something to remember i think.

Why is eugenics a bad thing again?

Eugenics is great. We can breed out all the modern diseases and birth defects; like questioning authority for example. Yay Eugenics! :D

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1709882,00.html

Since keeping old people alive is really expensive, and obese people (and smokers) don't live as long as thinner, healthier people, we can save money on healthcare by encouraging obesity.

Might as well do my duty to King and Country, and start killing people in their forties...

Well the easy solution is to refuse to treat the sick. Due to tight resources we have decided to only allow the people who are in perfect health to receive any treatment.

Not to mention

Not to mention

Yet you both mentioned...:p

And we can finally isolate and destroy the Jew gene!

The Jews control the global economy. We don't want to destroy it, we want to take it from them and inject it into us! Duh!

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1709882,00.html

Since keeping old people alive is really expensive, and obese people (and smokers) don't live as long as thinner, healthier people, we can save money on healthcare by encouraging obesity.
There is plenty of good to be said about discouraging unhealthy lifestyles. I'd rather see the market take care of this by adjusting prices for health insurance plans based on risk.

Do you want affordable insurance? Stop smoking, lose weight, and exercise.

Well the easy solution is to refuse to treat the sick. Due to tight resources we have decided to only allow the people who are in perfect health to receive any treatment.

Word it in more obscure terms, pitch it to a politician and you've just struck gold baby!

Why is eugenics a bad thing again?

Do you really need to ask that?

Because we can never be sure of the motivations of the people who have the power to enact eugenics policies. It's the ultimate slippery slope, and the ultimate expression of power over human beings.
Do the motives matter? Let's judge the outcomes.

Not to mention that you're likely fucking up the lives of all the relatives and friends of the suicidal person by encouraging them to commit suicide.
That's the suicidal person's call, isn't it? If they're so selfish that they'd kill themselves despite the hardships it might cause, is keeping them around really going to benefit anyone?

Do the motives matter? Let's judge the outcomes.The end doesn't justify the means.

That's the suicidal person's call, isn't it? If they're so selfish that they'd kill themselves despite the hardships it might cause, is keeping them around really going to benefit anyone?Yes, because treating their suicidal desires will typically alter their willingness to be that selfish.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1709882,00.html

Since keeping old people alive is really expensive, and obese people (and smokers) don't live as long as thinner, healthier people, we can save money on healthcare by encouraging obesity.

Because the majority of people would become sickening in appearance, and personally I want women to be just right not too fat or too thin. The only woman that would be attractive with a belly is a pregnant one. *nods*


Secondly obese people have health problems more often so they'll have to keep seeing the doctor and getting treatment which would increase the amount of money spent in health care rather than saving it. What would save healthcare funds is encouraging the populace to do things that'll make them healthy and deter the populace from engaging in self-destructive behavior.

but fatties cost diproportionate amounts of money while they're still alive. even accounting for their mass. i say harvest their blubber for energy production and then put them and their excess skin into freak showes to generate extra revenue for the NHS. it'll be a total giggle.

but fatties cost diproportionate amounts of money while they're still alive. even accounting for their mass. i say harvest their blubber for energy production and then put them and their excess skin into freak showes to generate extra revenue for the NHS. it'll be a total giggle.

I ICly did that once for a few NS years :p Well the skin was donated to hospitals for burn victims so that part was different

There is plenty of good to be said about discouraging unhealthy lifestyles. I'd rather see the market take care of this by adjusting prices for health insurance plans based on risk.

Do you want affordable insurance? Stop smoking, lose weight, and exercise.

Too funny operating under the assumption that only people with unhealthy lifestyles get sick. :rolleyes:

Visit a cancer center sometime and ask around about how many of them were health nuts to begin with. You will find an awful lot were. So tell me what are you going to do about the healthy lifestyle people who get dealt a bad hand? Punish them too?

They're going by the nominal data. It costs more per year for obese people and such. But more overall for healthy people because they live much longer. The former is the more important information.

To quote the PHB... "Our CEO reminds you that smoking is cool":p

What would save healthcare funds is encouraging the populace to do things that'll make them healthy and deter the populace from engaging in self-destructive behavior.
That's the opposite of what the study found. People who are fit live so much longer they actually increase healthcare costs over their lifetime.

Old people are expensive to maintain. Fat people don't stay old for long (and some of them never get there).

There is plenty of good to be said about discouraging unhealthy lifestyles. I'd rather see the market take care of this by adjusting prices for health insurance plans based on risk.

Do you want affordable insurance? Stop smoking, lose weight, and exercise.

Too funny operating under the assumption that only people with unhealthy lifestyles get sick. :rolleyes:

Visit a cancer center sometime and ask around about how many of them were health nuts to begin with. You will find an awful lot were. So tell me what are you going to do about the healthy lifestyle people who get dealt a bad hand? Punish them too?

That is one reason why the free market fails in terms of providing intelligent health care. Myrmi also inadverdently pointed out another one: adverse selection.

Adverse selection (http://www.oheschools.org/ohech3pg3.html)

A company selling health care insurance has to estimate the level of risk accurately . This is difficult because they will not have complete information on the risk status of the person they are insuring. One solution is to set the premium at an average risk level. But this makes the policy expensive for low risk customers who therefore may choose not to buy the insurance. This process whereby the best risks select themselves out of the insured group is called adverse selection.

Insurance companies know that this is likely to happen so they offer different premiums according to the level of risk and the person's experience of ill health. This is why most companies will offer non-smokers a lower premium than smokers. Offering low insurance premiums to low risk groups, often called 'cream skimming' or 'cherry picking', means high premiums have to be charged to high risk groups such as the elderly or chronically sick.

So in a free market, health care insurance is likely to be too expensive for many people, and especially for those most in need of health care.