The Tyranny of Public Health

by: david bozeman | published: 05 04, 2010

The county of Santa Clara, California has tentatively voted to ban Happy Meal toys, which supposedly entice children to consume fatty foods. No cause for alarm, some would argue, because such manifest absurdity is the exception and not the rule in hyper health-conscious 2010.

Public health policy has been infected by the debilitating disease of statism, the symptoms of which are evident not just in our culture or in isolated bergs of loony-liberalism but in the very mainstream of political discourse.

Over many years, the doctor-patient relationship has been overcrowded by high costs and reams of paperwork, imposed to satisfy ever-increasing regulation and stave off lawsuits. And now with Obama-care as law, we are no longer individual patients under the care of individual doctors, we are mere cogs in a wheel careening out of control toward decreased freedom and benefits and increased bureaucracy and collectivism.

No one is denying government's duty to protect public health by fighting highly contagious diseases and epidemics, but a freedom-loving people would draw the line at professional panty-waists carping over my cholesterol level or BMI (body mass index, for those of you not in the know). The Santa Clara embarrassment has drawn well-deserved hoots, but a ban on transfats in New York City in 2006 passed with little national outrage. Liberals, you see, can justify any intrusion on individual liberty by invoking their noble intentions, in this case, public health.

On a recent O'Reilly Factor, an anti-obesity activist (doesn't every kid dream of becoming one?) justified the Happy Meal toy ban in the name of public health. Liberals frequently carp that they shouldn't have to pay higher insurance premiums because of my Twinkie/Big Mac-induced heart attack. Liberals do not embrace the unlimited potential of pure capitalism but instead believe that only a finite supply of public funds exist for the health care of each American (give Obama a second term and who knows. . . ). Certainly a stampede will ensue if that opinion takes hold. Richard Lamm, former Democratic governor of Colorado said in 1984, lamenting various machines and artificial hearts, that maybe some of us "have a duty to die and get out of the way. . . and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life."

Now tell me again which party is the compassionate one?

Far from an isolated sentiment, such thought is the very essence of collectivism. Transferring health care from private to public domain breeds contempt for competitors at the public trough (the obese will soon be as maligned as smokers) and numbs all sense of judgment, responsibility and proportion. Pride and individual sustenance quickly defer to mere survival, and national policy is predicated not on action but reaction. Groupthink and panic eclipse calmness and detachment -- how many of us can recite the main ingredients of a bag of mini-Oreos but have little idea of the first ten amendments to the Constitution?

It is not obesity we need fear, nor Tony the Tiger or Cap'n Crunch (breakfast cereals, according to our would-be anti-lard czarina, are just sugar-in-a-box -- could they be the next target?). It is government-sanctioned know-it-alls who drill into our heads that we are controlled by Ronald McDonald and processed-food manufacturers. It is government policy that taxes employers and health-care providers and strictly limits the availability of insurance. It is the edicts of the FDA that prolong the development of new drugs (while the FDA has a place, so do consumer awareness and corporate accountability). Invoking 'public health' does not grant government the moral license to whittle away our freedoms. Free societies foster good health through independence, awareness and affordability via competition. Beware not clowns offering toys to the unwitting but busybodies protecting you from all risk.

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