STRAIGHTWRY COLUMN Nov. 3 to 9

How to Rule: Study It, Ban It, Tax It

From England, a land where the people once knew better, comes a new suggestion for rulers to meddle in what should be none of their business. The author of the latest atrocity is Stuart Marples, Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Healthcare Management.

Too many people are failing to manage their health as well as the Healthcare Institute people would prefer and it is time for Lord State Almighty to do something about it, something that will cost the people money, something that will spawn new battalions of government snoops, regulation-writers and management consultants.

The Marples proposal is that the British health care system should segregate people with unhealthy life styles and charge them extra premiums for their medical insurance.

Fat isn’t healthy, therefore tax the overweight people on pain of some and penalize them if they don’t pay. Fines and jail cells cure everything.

Also, he says, tax the skiers, the hang-gliding enthusiasts, the mountaineers and men who bed other men’s wives. Oh, all right, all right, so Mr. Marples didn’t specify adultery as one of the unhealthy practices which he finds offensive, but just remember that when the rule makers get together in Britain’s health care offices, who’s to say which people of society they will proscribe?

What groups must do as did the lepers in mediaeval Europe-- chant “unclean, unclean” when approached by the unafflicted?

And who is to decide which statistics shall apply, because statistics, like everything else, have their fashions and what is politically correct today will not be tomorrow.

The statistics on the perils of being overweight--high blood pressure, heart problems and so forth--fit the North American fashion. However some years ago other statisticians noted that the Dutch people were the most overweight in Europe yet suffered some of the lowest rates of heart disease. So whether you have an unhealthy life style and must be punished for it will depend on which book a bureaucrat chooses to read from and on which day.

The possibilities of punishing salt takers is bound to intrigue the rulers. For decades it has been proven, beyond shadow of doubt, that heavy use of salt hardens the arteries. That is, up until recent more studies were made, with more care. These revealed that although excess salt intake could be risky for some races, including the blacks, it only affected one out of fifteen Caucasians and Caucasian is what most western nation people are so 15 of us were being lectured for every one who needed a lecture.

Up until the day before yesterday, the rule makers would have surely wanted to charge higher premiums to technicians in X ray clinics. No matter how much shielding clinic staff employ and no matter how many precautions they take, these people are subject to more than the usual doses of radiation during their lives and everybody knows that radiation causes cancer. Oh? /It does?

Recent analysis has shown that radiation technicians have a lower rate of cancer than the national average; they also live longer than the national average, so indications are that a moderate amount of radiation improves our health rather than damages it.

No considerations such as these can discourage people of Mr. Marples breed. They will, after stubborn resistance, just adopt a new discovery or, for that matter, a new fad as basis for their lawmaking and pretend that this is the course they always followed.

It’s the act of lawmaking that gives them their jollies. Whether their laws have any effect, good or bad, upon the proles doesn’t count for much.
None are quicker to adopt the Marples plan than our own Minister of Health in Canada, Anne McLellan, who once distinguished herself by publicly dismissing 10,000 demonstrators on Parliament Hill as being “just paranoids.” Ms. McLellan has ordered a study of unhealthy practices by the Canadian prole class. The effects of overweight and, yes, sure enough, here it is, salt, wicked salt, are among the things to be examined.

And of course the World Health Organization is carrying out a similar study. But that is no surprise. Most of the nations of the earth never had the tradition of allowing people the freedom to use their own common sense and arrange their own lives. The British people were almost alone in enjoying such freedom. Most of the African, Asian and continental European states are accustomed to rulers who cuff them about the ears regularly and pass laws forbidding them to throw rocks and airplanes after sundown. Alas, even the English, it seems, are now in such an abject condition, prepared to stand by while the police squads go after the jellied doughnuts and whipped cream scoundrels.