There has been a flurry of stories recently about the obesity “epidemic,” in part triggered by a study purporting to show that this dread scourge is responsible for an additional $140 billion a year in additional medical costs. Reason’s Jacob Sullum took a look at the numbers with predictably entertaining results — there’s a good case to be made that this epidemic ends up saving money, particularly if you throw Social Security costs into the mix. Put bluntly: Live large, die young.
Jacob goes on to say this:
Fat warriors who push the fiscal argument, of course, are not willing to follow it to its logical conclusion when the data don’t go their way. They are committed to discouraging sloth and gluttony even if doing so will cost taxpayers more money than it saves them. All the talk about the burden on taxpayers is just a way of distracting attention from of the paternalism of the “public health” agenda.
That’s true enough, but it’s no reason to discount the political effectiveness of the argument, however flawed, that thinning down America will save taxpayer dollars, an argument that will gain considerable traction as government involvement in health care increases.
Paranoia? I doubt it, and the fact that Obama appointed the thuggish Thomas Frieden as head of the CDC is an additional reason to be concerned. Frieden may have given rats a pass at times during his stint as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, but he was merciless to humans, showing little sympathy for the idea that they are quite capable of taking a few decisions for themselves. He was a key figure in pushing through New York City’s smoking ban as well as the later trans-fat prohibition. By his final days in office he was on the warpath against salt, claiming that “reducing daily salt intake to the recommended daily limit in this country would save 150,000 lives a year,” and “recommending” changes in packaged foods and chain-restaurant meals.
That Obama appoints a man like this to the CDC says volumes about Obama — and the opportunity that the Democrats’ health-care schemes will give to the nanny state.