It would be cheaper if you were dead

A study funded by the Dutch government is challenging the notion that obesity costs governments money in the form of increased health care requirements (paid for by socialist governments), as reported by Yahoo! News. The study investigators were surprised to find that, according to their computer models, a fit, healthy nonsmoker would actually cost the government more than either an obese person or a smoker. Why? Because fit, healthy people live longer -- long enough to need expensive treatments for chronic illnesses later in life. As Pieter van Baal, the leader of the study, admitted, lung cancer is not an expensive illness (even though it may be treated with expensive chemotherapy drugs) because it doesn't last very long: The life expectancy of a typical patient with lung cancer from the time of diagnosis is months, not years. Alzheimer's disease, on the other hand, which a fit healthy person might live long enough to succumb to, lasts for years and requires chronic treatment -- very costly to a government that pays for its citizens' health care.

Nobody, including Pieter van Baal (quoted in the article as saying "We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity") wants to say it out loud, but these findings beg the question: Wouldn't it be cheaper if we all died young, before the expense of being old comes on? Wouldn't it be better for government bureaucrats if everyone lived long enough to pay plenty of income taxes, but not long enough to impose the costs of their age-related illnesses? Perhaps instead of banning trans fats and slapping warning labels on cigarettes, the government should be handing out free tobacco and chocolate cake.

Under a proper system of government, in which health care is a free market and not a socialist entitlement, such macabre ideas would not need to arise. The cost of each individual's own health care would be his or her own concern, and not the concern of bureaucrats and taxpayers. Each of us would make the decision to smoke or not to smoke, to maintain a healthy weight or not to, based on individual context and values, and each of us would pay the price -- financial or otherwise -- for that decision ourselves.