There’s no end of fun to be had with John Edwards’ plan to make everybody in America go to the doctors. Still, in his own blundering way, Silky Pony has hit on one of the logical consequences of state-supplied health care. If everyone is paying for everyone else’s healthcare, then that leaves the door open for no end of official intrusiveness and state meddling.

For a true barometer of how socialist medicine can corrupt the national culture, consider that in Britain it’s the (nominally) right-wing party that’s using health to excuse absurdly authoritarian restrictions on liberty. Tory leader David Cameron - think John Edwards, but without the macho swagger - flirted with the idea of ‘fat permits’. And no, I’m not making that up.

Just as the eco-loons want carbon permits to control how much carbon is put out, so the Tories wanted a system of permits for companies that produced fatty foods. As it happens, the idea has been officially placed on ice, but it’s a sign of the way the Tories - did I mention they were supposed to be right-wing ? - are thinking.

Indeed, it was Cameron himself who asked possibly the stupidest question in recent British political history, namely ‘why does WH Smith’s promote half-price Chocolate Oranges at its checkouts instead of real oranges?’ Apparently, the idea that WH Smith was a newsagent rather than a green grocers never occurred to him. Presumably, they should have been giving away a free banana with every copy of the Telegraph.

Still, that wasn’t the loopiest part of Cameron’s speech - he tried to claim people were fat because nasty old big business was forcing them to eat with irresponsible marketing techniques. It’s hard to know which aspect of that argument is more repellent, the suggestion that the public are a bunch of morons, easily bedazzled by slick marketing techniques, or the idea of politicians who want to dictate how private businesses conduct themselves.

The latest Big Idea from our non-Conservative Conservative Party is that only those who live state-approved lifestyles will be allowed to receive healthcare. So, in contrast to America, where 780 billion people per year die through being too poor to pay for healthcare - at least according to our MSM - we’ll be guaranteed health care, providing our lifestyle is one approved of by the self-same state that has to provide our care. What could go wrong ?

Needless to say, there’s a honking great pile of humbuggery in the left’s enthusiasm for compulsory healthiness. What about all those feminist harridans screeching ‘My body, my choice’ ? Nope, apparently it’s only your body if you want to harm somebody else. Ditto, with the Tories, and you-know-who. Cameron is justifiably notorious for pandering to the gay rights movement, but now it turns out that the people screaming about getting the government out of their bedroom, have no objection to the government lurking in their refrigerator. And no, that isn’t a moral point. In so far as its the left that wants to put lifestyle choices in the cross hairs, we’re perfectly justified in asking why only some lifestyle choices count. How come too many cheeseburgers is bad, but too much anonymous anal sex is free choice ?

See, that’s the thing with government healthcare. It’s not just the huge - and ever-escalating - costs, but it’s all the rest too. Once you accept the necessarily elephantine state required to give everyone in the country a tooth polish, then it’s naturally going to cast a shadow over everything else. In that sole respect, Edwards is right: once state healthcare takes root, everyone gets a prostate exam.

Said DJ @ 11:10 am | Permalink   

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