Is that a freedom or an entitlement? People who overeat and are obese should contribute to the inevitable extra healthcare costs, according to certain German politicians.
Naturally, there is an outcry, mostly from the opposition who would attack anything on principle. But emotions run high and comparisons with Hitler’s Nazi socialist principles have been used.
But wait a minute. Don’t WE have a freedom too? Don’t people who care about the social machine have freedom too, and a right NOT to pay for gluttonous monsters who overeat, despite all medical advice to the contrary, and then fall on the health care system as a financial burden?
I think we do.
Of course the protagonists in this war of words are chiefly the politicians, who are woefully ignorant of issues. One idiot said chocolate should carry a health warning. What, like this? Warning: chocolate can seriously improve your health and reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer?
But there are balanced, reasoned views for the argument: “I think it’s sensible that people who knowingly live unhealthily carry a responsibility for it in a financial respect,” said Marco Wanderwitz, the conservative MP for the state of Saxony and also head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats’s group of young parliamentarians .
“The question must be admitted whether the immense costs that, for example, arise from excessive consumption of food, can be permanently paid out of the consolidated health system.”
“As with tobacco, we should tax the purchase of unhealthy consumer goods at a higher rate and pay that tax into the health system,” Wanderwitz said.
Germany’s health system is funded by a series of mandatory health insurance funds, all of which are reporting serious deficits as the system is overused.
Bild, the German newspaper, estimated that treatment for obesity-related illnesses cost Germany some $25 billion a year.
Well, it’s not just a problem in Germany. So who should pay all the extra costs? The gluttons, or the rest of us that can control our immoderate appetites and have the will to go out for some exercize now and again?
The Nazism comment was made by Drew Kaplan, a good Jew who, I suppose predictably, wants to see everything German as Hitler-oriented. Sorry Drew, I’m not Jewish, or Nazi, and I like to think I’m moderate and sensible, a little to the right of center. But I have rights too. What about me and others like me?
From the opposite stand-point, why don’t I get a discount for taking care of myself! I stay in very good shape, eat well, don’t smoke, my blood pressure is great, etc, etc….
Good point Paul.
A bit like the Chinese system, where only good health is rewarded!
Prof.