I am, alone of all my friends, a big milk drinker. Yes, the milkman still delivers my milk in glass bottles each week straight from Crescent Ridge Farm.
But I'm not going to lord it over them that milk drinkers have longer lives because of the reduced incidences of coronary heart disease and stroke, up to 15-20%
But I will warn them against sunbeds. Even before studies showed that tanning beds definitely cause cancer, DEFINITELY cause cancer, I wouldn't go near them given my red hair and pale and freckled skin. I used to use those self-tanners but now I can't be bothered.
A large independent review has show that organic food 'has no health benefits' over conventionally grown food, but when it comes to certain fruits and vegetables, I discern a far better flavor.
But the worse health news of all is that Divorce damages your health - and getting remarried barely helps.
Divorced people have 20 per cent more chronic health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer than married people, according to the study of 8,652 people aged between 51 and 61 by Professor Linda Waite of the University of Chicago.
They also have 23 per cent more mobility problems, such as difficulty climbing stairs or walking short distances.
Do they have a 'right' to health care? Do the obese? Do alcoholics?
No says Theodore Dalrymple in the Wall St. Journal There is no 'right' to health care - for anyone.
If there is a right to health care, someone has the duty to provide it. Inevitably, that “someone” is the government. Concrete benefits in pursuance of abstract rights, however, can be provided by the government only by constant coercion.
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The question of health care is not one of rights but of how best in practice to organize it. America is certainly not a perfect model in this regard. But neither is Britain, where a universal right to health care has been recognized longest in the Western world.
Not coincidentally, the U.K. is by far the most unpleasant country in which to be ill in the Western world.
I wondered about this talk of right to health care because if you have a right, how can the government can decide who gets what medical procedure?
Econoblogger Megan McCardle describes it far more vividly
The other major reason that I am against national health care is the increasing license it gives elites to wrap their claws around every aspect of everyone's life. Look at the uptick in stories on obesity in the context of health care reform. Fat people are a problem! They're killing themselves, and our budget! We must stop them! And what if people won't do it voluntarily? Because let's face it, so far, they won't. Making information, or fresh vegetables, available, hasn't worked--every intervention you can imagine on the voluntary front, and several involuntary ones, has already been tried either in supermarkets or public schools. Americans are getting fat because they're eating fattening foods, and not exercising. How far are we willing to go beyond calorie labelling on menus to get people to slim down?
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These aren't just a way to save on health care; they're a way to extend and expand the cultural hegemony of wealthy white elites. No, seriously. Living a fit, active life is correlated with being healthier. But then, as an economist recently pointed out to me, so is being religious, being married, and living in a small town; how come we don't have any programs to promote these "healthy lifestyles"? When you listen to obesity experts, or health wonks, talk, their assertions boil down to the idea that overweight people are either too stupid to understand why they get fat, or have not yet been made sufficiently aware of society's disgust for their condition. Yet this does not describe any of the overweight people I have ever known, including the construction workers and office clerks at Ground Zero. All were very well aware that the burgers and fries they ate made them fat, and hitting the salad bar instead would probably help them lose weight. They either didn't care, or felt powerless to control their hunger. They were also very well aware that society thought they were disgusting, and many of them had internalized this message to the point of open despair. What does another public campaign about overeating have to offer them, other than oozing condescension?
The Econoblogger point is a good one. I live in Canada, which has universal healthcare. You can't pay for it even if you wanted to and are forced to take whatever the system offers unless you want to leave the country to get it somewhere else.
Once the government agrees that you have a right to healthcare, they suddenly think they have a right to tell you how to lead a healthy life because it'll end up costing them if you don't. People in the general population also use the cost of healthcare to taxpayers as a support for their own opinions about how others should run their lives.
As Dalrymple implies, I think this has been taken to an extreme in the UK -- not only on private citizens, but in browbeating business into only producing "healthy" food. Here is an example:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/6095/
Of course, you have to be very certain of the government's definition of healthy. I don't place a lot of trust in nutrition science and the labelling of "healthy" food.
Mark Steyn has an interesting perspective on US vs Canadian healthcare:
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/2271/100/
Just want to add... associated with the "right" to anything, I am bothered by the lack of appreciation that accompanies the granting of a right. Some people can maintain a sense of appreciation, but a lot lose the sense of gratitude and replace it with a sense of entitlement. I'm a bit put off by the surprised looks I get sometimes when I criticize the notion of "rights" and suggest that there should be a sense of gratitude attached to these things. Some people are offended by the idea that you should feel gratitude for receiving what's apparently your due (and Dalrymple has criticized the same in the past, too).
The way I look at it is... if you are in the jungle, you have no right to life. Same if you go and play in traffic. If the planet runs out of water, you have no right to water. We should do our best to provide them, but I have a problem with the framing of these things as "rights" when they are often completely out of human control. And, of course, the notion of "responsibilities" to deserve those rights is completely left out of the picture these days.
Posted by: mattbg at July 30, 2009 7:22 AM