The nanny state is alive and well (and expensive) in Alabama
From Junkfood Science we learn [all emphasis added]:
Compulsory medication and monitoring of diets and lifestyles by the State is now a reality for workers in Alabama who are older or have certain genetic physical characteristics.
Despite efforts to paint this in rosy euphemisms, under a new plan just approved by Alabama’s State Employees’ Insurance Board, if workers don’t agree to be subjected to lifestyle and health screening and blood tests for specific hereditary characteristics, they will be penalized $25 a month or be denied health insurance coverage.
Healthcare decisions will no longer be those for individuals and their personal healthcare providers to make. Workers found to have high BMIs, cholesterol levels, glucose levels, or blood pressures will be required to enroll into wellness programs with their integrated disease management, along with weight loss targeting those with BMIs ≥35, and be given one year to improve, or be penalized $25/month. Those who are thin and have approved numbers will be exempt.
According to the State Employee’s Insurance Board, the program, which will cost taxpayers $1.6 million next year alone, is about improving health and saving insurance costs for the State.
And it gets worse:
The requisite employee “wellness” and weight loss programs have not proven long-term effectiveness, but to put employees at increased risks. Nor to they actually lower healthcare costs. Achieving ideal numbers invariably requires prescription medications and other invasive measures, especially, as has been shown, for those over age 50.
In reality, these health risk factors are primarily measures of genetics and aging, and hence, using them is discriminatory, but hiding behind euphemisms of being about promoting healthy lifestyles.
The full article is here. It will be interesting to watch this progress. Perhaps abject failures of nanny state health care programs in Alabama and Massachusetts will finally get more people to question the wisdom of universal health care.
Tags: healthcare, nanny state
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