Tag Archives: obamacare

Obamacare Requires Disclosure of Calorie Content

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I think too many people know nothing about Obamacare except that the name Obama is in the title, and that’s enough for them to like it or dislike this very complex healthcare legislation.

No matter how you feel about it, I think the law is an attempt at reform that at the very least is inspiring an important public discourse on one of the most important subjects that we face as a democracy.

So, I’ve been slowly chipping away at learning more about this huge 2010 law. One of the interesting provisions is that chain restaurants must list the calories of menu items in the menu. They must also provide detailed nutritional content info (fat, sodum, carbs, sugars, protein, etc) upon request.

I knew that this has been a growing trend in restaurants, but I thought that it was due to laws passed in major cities and not due to a federal law. In some cases, restaurants have until 2014 to start disclosing this info, so there still might be a few hold outs.

I am a huge fan of government forcing information down our throats. That’s where big government does the most good in my opinion: help inform the public, and let the public make their own individual choices.

Where a lot of people start feeling uneasy is when laws start popping up that limit what people can eat or drink. For example, the following video discusses a recent New York City law that bans jumbo-sized sugary drinks in restaurants, theaters, and street carts. I like this specific law, but it makes me nervous.

Like I said, I’m all for government informing the public, even forcing that information down our throats. But consumer freedom is essential to the economic vibrancy of our nation. We should limit this freedom very carefully, if at all.

Common Sense Reminder: You Will Get Sick and You Will Have To Pay

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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of the new health care law’s individual mandate today (hear the arguments on C-SPAN). The individual mandate requires that everyone in America purchase health insurance.

The debate over the morality and fiscal potency of the health care law very interesting, but that’s not what the Supreme Court court is deliberating. They’re simply trying to figure if the federal government has the power to mandate that you buy something, overriding state’s rights. It’s really a debate about the relative power of the federal government relative to state governments.

The constitutional opponents of the law believe that allowing a mandate would remove any identifiable limiting principle. This means that the government can next force you to do anything else because it’s “good for you”.

The best question (in my mind) asked by the proponents of the law (such as myself) is: what happens when an uninsured person shows up at the hospital and can’t pay out of pocket even a small fraction of the cost? In fact, no one is really asking this question fully. It seems everyone assumes that of course we treat the person to the best of our abilities and then the taxpayer has to flip the bill. It seems that the people that are demanding their personal liberty be protected are really operating on the assumption that they will not get sick or will be able to save enough to cover the costs. In their minds, they can do a better job at fighting off sickness than their less-clever neighbor. That assumption reminds of the assumption folks have when they recite the wedding vows. You can’t base a policy that determines the well being of millions on hope.

Just to be clear, whether the health care law is deemed constitutional or not, to me, is much less important than the fact that our current health care system is broken and this law is one of the possible fixes. If it’s not constitutional, then we need to do something else that is, but we can’t afford (literally) to do nothing.

As a side note, I discovered that there are services out there that allow you to hire a person to stand in line for you. The rate I saw was $36 per hour. This came up because people stood in line for days to be able to get one of the 60 seats open to the public for individual mandate hearing.

The Burden of Responsibility in the Health Care System

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Main point: Either we have to be willing to watch a poor man die or we have to force that man to pay for insurance throughout his life.

Suppose a man is lying in the street, bleeding to death. He has no money, no insurance, but a simple procedure would save his life. The libertarian argument is that this is the cold moment when a man must take responsibility for the decisions he has made in the past and the cruel turn of luck that has led to his current circumstance.

It seems to me that we don’t live in a society that is willing to let such a man die. The alternative is to force the healthy and the fortunate to pay for the sick and the unfortunate. So until we are willing to turn a bleeding man away, I see no other option but to let government step in and force us to be responsible. I purposely phrase it in a way that seems like a contradiction, but one that’s no worse than the contradiction of our moral system.

By the way, the Supreme Court is scheduled (next year) to hear the case of whether Obama’s healthcare overhaul is constitutional:

This case is not as philosophically interesting as at first may seem, but unfortunately it will likely be politicized to a point where it may influence the decision of the judges.