Today I was at a community house for local activists/radicals/anarchists and found this sticker posted underneath by the water dispenser:
Surgeon General’s Warning:
Consumption of soft drink bevarages may result in
Rotten teeth, diabetes, obesity, malnutrition, osteoporosis, & Cancer
Well it wasn’t exactly like that, because it was all in caps.
I took it down, and tomorrow I’m going to leave this in its place:
To the person who put up that sticker, and everyone else who couldn’t be bothered to take it down.
I have gotten tired of taking down messages that reinforce mainstream ideas about food and bodies. Rather than just removing that sticker, I am going to explain why I find it problematic – in the hope that one day people will stop putting such messages up – or at least other people will take them down before I see them.
1. I have no idea why you thought this message is necessary. Presumably you believe that there are people out there who have been deprived of the information that soft-drinks can lead to rotten teeth, and there only way of accessing this information is through alternative channels. We obviously live in very different worlds.
2. Telling people that they shouldn’t eat a particular food because they might get fat, is about as un-radical message as you can find. I’m not even going to go there, you should know better.
3. As activists we should be focusing on health collectively rather than individually. We challenge the system of unemployment rather than blaming people for not getting a job. Surely we should challenge the system of food production rather than blaming people for getting sick
4. Think for a second about people who have the diseases listed – would you really be ok with someone with rotten teeth reading that? Are you even aware about the link between rotten teeth and poverty? Is this just another way of making sure that only middle-class alternative types feel comfortable in this space?
So lets stop with the moralistic bullshit around food. Let’s treat food politically or ignore it. Repeating mainstream messages is not an option.
PS: Surgeon General? Can we please stick to the bureaucrats we are actually inflicted with, without borrowing other people’s?
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Totally in agreement, Maia.
And it was underneath the water dispenser??? The message being what? That water is next on the Great Big Danger List? (“If consumed in excess or breathed into the lungs, water can be fatal”?)
Shouldn’t it at least be on the soft drink machine, if there is one, except that it shouldn’t be anywhere??
As activists we should be focusing on health collectively rather than individually.
I’ve read stuff like this in your posts before. Are you saying that it’s wrong to suggest that there’s anything people can do as individuals to improve their own health?
Surely we should challenge the system of food production rather than blaming people for getting sick.
Which means…what, exactly? That rather than encouraging people, as individuals, to limit their consumption of soft drinks, we should just ban them altogether?
1. I have no idea why you thought this message is necessary. Presumably you believe that there are people out there who have been deprived of the information that soft-drinks can lead to rotten teeth, and there only way of accessing this information is through alternative channels.
This is the standard corporate argument against every kind of labeling requirement or damages action. Do you really oppose all those policies?
Telling people that they shouldn’t eat a particular food because they might get fat, is about as un-radical message as you can find.
Saying that something shouldn’t be said because it’s “un-radical” is just silly. Is everyone in this community required to have radical beliefs about every single issue? Is radicality indicative of correctness?
It’s Karl Marx, Brandon. I don’t mean that as an insult (or, as praise), that’s just a statement.
Fundamentally, Marxism posits that people are “conditioned” (by which they almost mean “created”) by the tools of production, or, more widely, by the culture. It follows then that it is of limited or no utility to urge individuals to behave well. If individuals behave badly, the only effective recourse is collective: to change the culture.
Thus Maia’s statement,
is straight out of this philosophy precisely.
Was Marx wrong? Was he right? Is it a little of both? Such questions are presumably beyond the scope of this discussion.
Personally I’m tired of the Nanny State scolding me at every turn about everything I do, but that’s a somewhat different issue.
Agreed about the nanny state. If I recall right, nannies are supposed to not just keep us in line but protect us, feed us and make us feel better when we get hurt. This country hasn’t been doing a real good job of the latter 3, so it, or rather its mouthpieces, ought to ease wa-a-ay back on the former.
I get the same damn thing from the left and the right. Someone yaps at me to recycle, but there aren’t recycle bins outside this building. It’s the culture that’s messed up. Not that individuals are always as helpless as some interpretations of Marx might have it–all right, I don’t know a lot abt. Marx–but still.
You want me to stop drinking unhealthy crap, how about making the healthy stuff more affordable. For starters. Full disclosure, I’m usually satisfied with water, and think most of what’s dealt as soft drinks nowadays could be poured back in the horse. And another thing Maia said bears repeating, that people who are struck by some disease don’t exactly need someone assuming it’s their fault. Sometimes it isn’t.
Um, but you do know that there are scientists advocating putting a Surgeon General’s warning on soda pop? And you were in a group house of radical activists and were offended to find such a thing???
But honestly, I’m *more* worried about Diet sodas than The Real Thing (straight-up sugar), because diet sodas contain nothing but chemicals (and women in particular consume these chemicals in mass quantities), and at least one of those chemicals does in fact have to be bolded and set off with a WARNING: THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS X CHEMCIAL on the soda can’s label.
I’m also curious: When did taking care of your body become antifeminist? Regardless of whether it’s questioning mass consumption of straight sugar or chemicals. Just asking.
The only problem with the sticker is that they put it on the water dispenser, where people who have rotten teeth from drinking soda pop and not brushing are not unlikely to read it.
I have gotten tired of taking down messages that reinforce mainstream ideas about food and bodies.
This statement seeems to imply that because somethings is “mainstream” we should automatically reject it. Am I understanding you correctly? Is so, don’t you think that as long as something is “true,” that should be more important than whether or not it is mainstream? Here in American there are plenty of poor children with rotten teeth from eating too much candy and drinking too much soda, who don’t know that their bad dental hygiene is the result of soda decaying their teeth. There doesn’t seem to be anything on the sticker that was incorrect, except you don’t like it because it was “mainstream”–that sounds reactionary, not radical.
Susan, is right about the rest of your post, it’s Marxism through and through: We are all apart of “the collective.” and none of us can exist outside of it ( and if we wanted to, we wouldn’t even be allowed to).
I’m also curious: When did taking care of your body become antifeminist? Regardless of whether it’s questioning mass consumption of straight sugar or chemicals. Just asking.
I think that if you are fat, or have decayed tteet6h its impossible not to regard messages like that as being a personal moral critisism.
The message such messages send is that
When life has little in the way of pleasure I am now supposed to feel ashamed of enjoying sugar.
Great post, and I love the Network quote.
“When did taking care of your body become antifeminist?”
When ‘taking care of your body’ became a euphemism for ‘don’t be fat or old-looking or sick or ugly’. When ‘healthy eating’ became a euphemism for ‘dieting’. When anyone who wasn’t slim and perky became a scapegoat for the health police.
I realise that you probably didn’t mean it in that respect, but that’s what a healthist society means by it.
‘Taking care of your body’ is a private matter, I believe. It is not a personal imperative for everyone nor should it be compulsory/enforced by the government or anyone else. Like, say, religion and prayer. ‘Taking care of your body’, personally, is not antifeminist as long as you don’t evangelise. Some people get enjoyment out of doing everything just-so ‘healthy’, and bully for them. But living like that is not for everyone, nor possible for everyone. Disability activists also have things to say about this, but I will leave that to those better-educated in the field.
[I’ve probably posted this before, but I live in a country with mostly-socialised health care, and I’m well aware that people may willingly do ‘unhealthy’ things that lead to them costing the state money (oh! My precious tax dollars!). But I don’t think treatement should be denied to anyone regardless of what they have or haven’t done. Where do you draw the line? Who gets to draw the line? And I don’t agree that aggressive ‘health campaigns’ that become intrusive and personally distressing for many (e.g. current fears over ‘obesity’) are wise and save health care costs in the long run.]
Surely we should challenge the system of food production rather than blaming people for getting sick.
The system of food production will change when people stop buying the crap they produce. McDonalds is raking isn’t raking in vast sums because they are tackling people on the streets and forcing Big Macs down their throats. I think governmental labelling requirements are fine. Now it’s time for people to start to read the damn labels and make some intelligent decisions.
And hey – if they make decisions that I don’t approve of, that’s too bad for me.
Well, I spend a lot of time (oh, I’m a lurker, hello) in radical houses, and I would bet you good money that the sign was up by the water dispenser in order to remind everyone that here at the radical house, we all have consensus about how special we are and how good our food politics are and how you’ll end up all gross-looking if you aren’t just like us.
I say this because I’ve had to have a big argument at the bookstore where I volunteer in order for us to get rid of the bumperstickers that said “Plants and animals die to make room for your fat ass”. We’re a pretty skinny collective, since most people are college-age vegan types. I’m the fattest one, which is trying at times, and it really bugged me that even though I bike all around and don’t own a car, my “fat ass” is sort of a stand-in for the evils of the world.
If that sticker had actually been at a place where soft drinks were regularly served, I would have some sympathy. But if it’s in a place where everyone already micro-manages their food choices, it’s there for self-righteous reasons.
Plus, if you’re on the left you’re either trying to be welcoming to others or you’re not, and saying “Well, if you’re fat or you have bad teeth, it’s your own damn fault for not being as good as me” is not exactly going to win you any friends. If anything, that’s exactly the kind of stupid exclusiveness that the left is often accused of, and I’m surprised to see it defended here.
But honestly, I’m *more* worried about Diet sodas than The Real Thing (straight-up sugar), because diet sodas contain nothing but chemicals (and women in particular consume these chemicals in mass quantities),
And regular soda, milk, beer or water are made out of – what, exactly? Pure energy?
and at least one of those chemicals does in fact have to be bolded and set off with a WARNING: THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS X CHEMCIAL on the soda can’s label.
The reason for that is because a rare few people have phenylketonuria, a serious genetic illness which prevents them from metabolising certain chemicals. They have to be warned off anything containing aspartame.
That doesn’t mean it’s a danger to the rest of us, per se, any more than the fact that chocolate can kill your dog means it is a danger to you, per se. Diet sodas are essentially (*gasp*) water.
While I agree with your sentiment and I also have little patience for moralizing about food or health, I think that the most effective way to change the food production culture is economic…a boycott.
so we have to choose between two evils: evil food production culture or evil moralizing in order to spur a boycott (i don’t think a boycott would happen without some riling). unfortunately, i have to therefore disagree with you, because i think the moralizing is the lesser evil.
The system of food production will change when people stop buying the crap they produce.
Surely you’re not saying that the system of food production in the US is purely market-driven.
And yeah, the sticker person is clearly a moron. Putting any kind of anti-soda message at all on the water dispenser?
“diet sodas contain nothing but chemicals”
Sugar and water are also chemicals. This isn’t idle pedantry – why would the chemicals in diet soda bother you more than the ones in sugary sodas?
Interesting how they warn that consumption of soft drinks can lead to “obesity” (whatever that is and whyever that would be a bad thing) but they don’t warn that they can lead to the far deadlier (at least according to current research) “underweight” seen in many diet soda drinkers. The “radicals” attacking fat people and others who don’t meet their body norms has got to stop.
Here’s a warning for them: “Warning: Consumption of healthist messages may result in judgmentalism, stereotypes, prejudice, appearance obsession, victim-blaming, arrogance, and general asshattery.”
It wouldn’t even take a boycott. When enough people make different choices about foods (anyone notice the explosion in organic food choices these days?), the market will respond.
As for the sticker, there are better and more accurate ways to convey the message that soda is junk. There are even sodas that are less junk than the high fructose corn sweetener filled junk that’s out there. But putting that message on the water cooler? I give that one an “F” for effort.
>Are you even aware about the link between rotten teeth and poverty?
Doesn’t this link involve soft drinks?
>I think that if you are fat, or have decayed tteet6h its impossible not to regard messages like that as being a personal moral critisism.
Impossible? The how do you make a claim about a food that is not also about the individuals consuming it? What would such a statement look like?
>It follows then that it is of limited or no utility to urge individuals to behave well. If individuals behave badly, the only effective recourse is collective: to change the culture.
This is an empirical question: it may be the case that
it’s of limited or no utility to urge individuals to behave well. In which case, there is nothing wrong with collective action.
(Phoenician in a time of Romans, thanks for making that clarification re: “chemicals.”)
Surely you’re not saying that the system of food production in the US is purely market-driven.
Hm. A lot of mass-produced food has qualities in it that are there for reasons other than nutrition. Preservatives, etc. But then, consider why they do that. Mass production of food makes it cheaper, and helps to make it possible to buy food during the off-season for that food. Buying fresh food and organic food all the time can be more expensive, is less convenient (preparation time and having to shop a lot more often) and limits your food options during certain times of the year. The fact that people are willing to accept mass-produced food instead of going the non-mass-produced food route helps define the market. Producers breed tomatoes that are less nutritious but have superior shipping qualities. They’re not as good, but the producers are responding to my desire to have a fresh tomato in February that was grown a thousand miles away.
What portions of the food industry would you say are not market driven?
Ya’ll would shoot Rachel Carson, wouldn’t you?
Since when did reading a label about potential health related risks bring about shame in the reader? Folks, if you’re having a major psychological reaction about a food related label, you’re the one with the issues. If reading the word “obesity” in a label, when related to a causality, brings about feelings of shame in you, you need to look at yourself as the problem. This is getting ridiculous.
Getting pissed off is one thing; letting a label have so much influence on your emotional health is quite another. That label could be read many different ways, only one of which would include moralization.
What portions of the food industry would you say are not market driven?
We could start with farm subsidies.
oooo, mythago, it has that sharp, sharp tongue. And so accurate!
Hah! Good one. Fair enough. Then there’s the price controls on sugar (I’m not sure if that would count as a farm subsidy or not). So the food industry is not entirely market-drive. But it’s still a huge factor.
I think the problem here is where once again, “this is for your own good dear” and “besides, it is Bad for the People and the Movement” are unhappily conflated.
i don’t fly into a rage over people putting up stickers like that, although i get where it might be a tipping point for someone who’s been hearing a bunch of similar sounding stuff in the name of “radicalism,” to typically splendid results; but it is, well, annoying. and not very good, frankly.
“Gee, thanks Mom.”
I mean, really, what else is there to say to that?
If you want to talk about the exploitation of the Coca Cola company, then do that. If you’re genuinely concerned about someone’s -health,- then that is another argument altogether. and frankly putting up stickers over the water cooler is, well…yeah, as Maia said: tell us something we -don’t- know about soda pop; and say, who are you anyway, and why are you putting this -here-?
unless you are trying to say “I will rescue you from Those People what have Sinister Motives, unlike me who am only concerned for What’s Best For You.”
it has an appeal, that; it’s just not one i think is terribly terrific for a genuinely democratic/egalitarian movement. this is where it starts, or one of the places.
…you know what it is, is, people using, or attempting to use, the same rather cynical approaches to “marketing” as the Co-Cola company. go for the visceral and the jugular. “oh, shit, not my teeth!”
except for, you’re -not- trying to sell a product here, you are trying to create a different sort of -system,- not just turn people away from that particular product so that -you- can profit, so that sort of approach may just come under the whole “master’s tools, etc. etc.”, it occurs to me, just now. you know: treating people like they’re dumber than they are, because it “works” faster. except when it doesn’t.
…like say y’know if the goal was truly to turn people away from Co-Cola and onto fresh pure water, well, so now Coke has the whole Dasani pure bottled water line as well, doing rather nicely, too. How’re you gonna work that one, health wise? Oops.
The food industry is entirely market-driven.
Things like farm subsidies distort the market by changing the information content that prices encode, but they don’t break it. Food producers have no ability to coerce the consumption of particular products, and the wide array of available substitutes (in an economic sense) mean that any attempt to coerce consumption is doomed to fail. (They don’t even try, that I can see.)
If everybody decides that corn syrup soda is icky, then Coke is either out of business or switching to cane sugar. If ten million people decide to become vegetarians, then soy farmers rejoice and beef ranchers cry, but neither Coke nor farmers nor ranchers have the power to make consumers do anything.
RonF, you can’t really say that market forces are “huge” when those forces are heavily skewed by subsidies and price controls.
As I said in another context (disability):
Wow, that didn’t work. Let’s try again:
This is exceedingly difficult. It appears to me everyone on almost all sides has good points, but is also overreacting, often to the overreations on the other side.
1. Individuals make choices constrained by their environment, and society is the primary environment for most people.
2. The left can greatly help people by changing society to give people better choices. This is the good in collective action.
3. The left can greatly help people by empowering them to make better individual choices. This can be done by providing them with political power, ecconomic power, or intellectual power. Intellectual power is the education necessary to make the best choices for themselves.
4. The left greatly harms people when it tries to make choices for them. This is because each individual is the expert in his or her own life, no matter how much greater IQ or formal education the leftest expert may possess. (Also, the experts can sometimes turn out to be just wrong, such as the much discussed on this blog incorrect identification of weight as a cause, rather than an indicator, of unhealthy habbits.)
5. There is actually a very fine line between empowering the public to make better choices through an education campaign and oppressively shaming them for making the “wrong” choices. That is, an over eager attempt to correctly engage in the activity in point 3 can bleed into becoming the oppressive activity in point 4. Those who criticize campaigns that cross the line into point 4 social engineering should not try to eliminate all point 3 empowerment campaigns, and those who engage in such empowerment campaigns should be careful not to slip into point 4 behaivor and should not dismiss criticism that they have done so lightly.
Yes, it is good to encourage people to make healthy choices.
Yes, it is good to give people healthy alternatives.
No, you should not criticize people for being unhealthy. Being unhealthy is either not their fault or it is their choice. Or some combination. Either way, it is not a moral failing worthy of criticism.
Also, just a general note: telling other people they are “overreacting”? Also generally not too helpful.
“don’t feel the way you’re feeling.”
someone let me know whenever that has worked to do anything other than piss the someone off even -more.-
that said, i agree with that post 32, by and large.
>5. There is actually a very fine line between empowering the public to make better choices through an education campaign and oppressively shaming them for making the “wrong” choices.>
yup.
what really ought to be “examined” is the desire for control. we’ve all got it. it’s not necessarily even a bad thing. except when we try to stuff it down and pretend it doesn’t exist, and/or come up with all sorts of justifications for it.
This is why I think people should be able to eat whatever the heck they want, and ignore all the “healthist” messages, but when they do start having health problems related to their food consumption they get not one ounce of sympathy for me.
Am I the only one who has ever noticed that the only people who want to consider healthist messages as some sort of domination by the mainstream also believe healthcare is a human right? Am I the only one that has made this connection?
Jamaila, L di Da, “Follow the money.”
When payment for healthcare is collectivized, expect collective control over behavior hard on its heels. (Who pays the piper….) Do you smoke? Too bad for you. Also if you drink alcohol/eat fatty foods/drink Coke/whatever. Not to mention what happens to you and your baby if you refuse to abort a child We think shouldn’t be let to live.
Am I the only one who has ever noticed that the only people who want to consider healthist messages as some sort of domination by the mainstream also believe healthcare is a human right?
They seem to be the same people who believe that evolution is such a proven fact that no dissent is possible, but get really pissed off at any suggestion that evolutionary processes apply to human beings.
“If I have learned one thing in my life as a disabled person it is that when someone has my “best interests in mind” I am in very big trouble.”
Edit out the “as a disabled person” to generalize it and you have a key element in the conservative/limited-government canon.
Not to mention what happens to you and your baby if you refuse to abort a child We think shouldn’t be let to live. + Socialism = China.
Decnavda:
3. The left can greatly help people by empowering them to make better individual choices. This can be done by providing them with political power, ecconomic power, or intellectual power. Intellectual power is the education necessary to make the best choices for themselves.
This is why I’m all in favor of legislation that forces companies to put a list of ingredients on their products. A socialist compromise, I know, but this way it makes it a lot easier for people to make intelligent choices.
Jamila Akil & Susan –
I used to agree with you due to the apparently sound theory behind the ideas in posts 35 & 36. I have changed my mind based on empirical evidence. Every other industrialized nation has universal health insurance, spends less on healthcare, has equal or better helth outcomes, and has more or less equal restrictions on personal choices as the U.S. The present example illustrates: We have health nannies, they have health nannies. The presence or absence of universal health insurance does not seem to be a causal factor.
As an armchair theorist myself, I have no problem with it. But the broad statistical empirical evidence favors universal health coverage.
There appears to be some confusion – this wasn’t an actual warning label. It was something someone had made up and stuck on the water dispenser. By doing it in the context of this particular house they were clearly claiming that puttingup this sticker was a radical/alternative act.
I should also point out that in New Zealand, particularly among the sort of people who hang out at this house, soft-drinks aren’t generally a water-substitute. People might drink them as a treat or mix with alcohol. But I don’t know anyone who would keep a bottle, of soft-drink in the fridge and drink it because they were thirsty. Which was why the sticker was particularly badly placed.
I’ve previously taken down signs that had similar messages. The most recent was advertising a critical mass bike ride had a comic book style picture of a woman riding a bike with: ‘burn fat not oil underneath’.
Decnavda,
Yes. I’d agree with you on the basis of empirical evidence, except that the country we’re talking about collectivizing this time is the USA, the nosiest country on the planet, and the most puritanical.
I think we should have universal health care here, on the bases you cite (among others). But we’re really going to have to watch ourselves on the issues I’ve named, among others.
post-note: My daughter and her family live in Scotland, where health care is socialized. No extremely ominous results, except that I’d like to know what happens to disabled children born into that system whose parents knew ahead of time.
Also, while services for the young (vaccinations, childcare, pre-natal care) are better than ours (USA), care for the elderly, and cancer care particularly, aren’t nearly so good. That’s because the Collective doesn’t view an 85 year old woman with cancer as being as valuable as a two-year-old. So the former will have to keep queue to get services. Which may thereby be a bit late. Even more so if what she wants is a hip replacement.
Is this realistic? Yes. Even if we give the 85 year old woman a hip replacement, she probably has 10 years max to enjoy it, whereas pre-natal care lasts a lifetime (of the baby). What is the view of the Collective of a Down child? Since I haven’t encountered this personally, I don’t know.
I have a friend who is a Christian missionary in China. Early in the (now very advanced) penetration of AIDS into China, he visited a hospital, and encountered a patient dying of AIDS. He stopped and had a long conversation with this guy. (My friend speaks the language.) His guides were astonished. From their point of view, the patient was dying of AIDS = just as good as dead = dead, and who bothers with the dead?
Scotland is not China. Still less is the USA China. But this calculation bears watching, especially by the disabled community.
Decnavda Writes:
Jamila Akil & Susan -I used to agree with you due to the apparently sound theory behind the ideas in posts 35 & 36. I have changed my mind based on empirical evidence. Every other industrialized nation has universal health insurance, spends less on healthcare, has equal or better helth outcomes, and has more or less equal restrictions on personal choices as the U.S.
The U.S has the best healthcare system in the world. Thats a heady proclamation I know, but it’s true. At this point in time I can’t do all the research for this particular post, and even if I could, I can’t post it here because it would be long enough to fill this entire page. You can’t compare statistics from the US to other countries regarding healthcare for numerous reasons: different ways of calculating “live births”, different rates of poverty, different ethnic/racial group mixtures etc. It is impossible to accurately compare healthcare stats from country to country without looking at confounding variables.
I’m in favor of a free-market healthcare system for every nation, but I don’t want to digress.
Hey, look, it’s Michael Pollan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?em&ex=1170219600&en=ce28063f61d4a925&ei=5087
The U.S has the best healthcare system in the world. Thats a heady proclamation I know, but it’s true. At this point in time I can’t do all the research for this particular post, and even if I could, I can’t post it here because it would be long enough to fill this entire page.
Was this INTENDED to be satirical?
Jamila Akil:
I don’t think this is true. My perception has been that the truth is closer to the opposite—that is, that the left tends more towards enthusiasm and excessive credulity for healthism, while libertarians and the right tend more towards resentment and excessive skepticism.
No, it wasn’t. I think the US would be even better if we eliminated most ( if not all) government intrusion into healthcare, but like I said, it would take much more than one post for me to explain this.
I think I might be understanding the term”healthism” incorrectly. I thought “healthism” mean’t that there was an attempt being made to differentiate between healthy/unhealthy or good foods/bad foods. I thought that libertarians ( and those not in favor of socialized medicine) were for this-food labeling with ingredients and such- because people can choose to eat what they want to eat, but they pay for their own healthcare. Whereas, those who want socialized medicine seem to be against labeling certain foods and behaviors-such as lack of exercise and constant drinking of soda pop- as bad or unhealthy.
Did I get my terms confused?
You’ve gotta be kidding me, right?
Changes in food production will begin and end with the consumer. Individuals who support organic growers and who purchase healthy foods and make healthy choices are making political statements. Try and ban evil soft drinks and the public will have your throat.
If the corporations are changing production it’s because consumers are pressuring them to through collective AND individual action.
I have no problem with surgeon general’s warnings and people who CHOOSE to eat shit are morons. There’s no excuse for ignorance any more.
Jamila:
I don’t think there’s any terminological confusion—I just disagree with your assessment. I’ve seen most of the attacks on unhealthful foods coming from the left. It’s not strictly necessary for conservatives and libertarians to reject the factual claims of healthism—it’s perfectly legitimate to believe, as I do, that a food is unhealthful but that the government should butt out anyway—but I’ve noticed that a lot do reject them anyway.
I suspect that this comes from the tendency people have to try to force their factual beliefs into harmony with their ideologies. You don’t have to reject healthist claims in order to be a libertarian, but it does make it easier, in a way.
Mythago:
In what ways do you think farm subsidies and other market distortions undermine Ron’s claim that food companies will stop making unhealthful foods when people stop buying them?
Jamilia Akil writes:
The U.S has the best healthcare system in the world. Thats a heady proclamation I know, but it’s true. At this point in time I can’t do all the research for this particular post, and even if I could, I can’t post it here because it would be long enough to fill this entire page.
Mythago replies:
Was this INTENDED to be satirical?
Depends on how you define “best”. It’s certainly the most technically advanced. People come from all over the world to use American healthcare. The basic care you receive when you get in it is excellent. But there are problems with people being able to afford parts of it.
I’m not an expert in socialized medicine. However, based on what limited reading I’ve done; If I was sick and worried about what the skill level of care I was likely to receive, I’d rather be in America than anyone else. If I was looking to have an elective procedure, I’ll probably be able to arrange to have it in the U.S. quicker than in a country with socialized medicine. If I was poor and didn’t have any health insurance, I would have more problems getting basic care than in countries with socialized medicine.
Now, what you think is “best” is going to depend on whether you think the relative importance of “basic care readily available to all” and “technical level of care” and “availability of various kinds of care affected by age, etc.” and various other factors are.
Umm, yeah. “Best” is really going to depend on how you can define it. Best for say, my parents, who are well-insured and wealthy enough to (for an example) fly halfway across the country to get to the very best doctor for a complicated procedure – sure.
Best for my next-door neighbor with the chronically ill child, who has turn backflips to get sufficient testing supplies because the state system doesn’t distinguish between a 50-year-old diabetic and a three-year-old? Not really. And if she goes to work to get better, private insurance, she has to leave a highly reactive diabetic child in the hands of a day-care provider. She tried it once – he spent a week in the ICU.
Best for my teacher, who had to wait six months before he could afford the co-pay for his MRI, and then another two before he could afford the co-pay for the appointment to get the results? Hardly. Mind you, for the entire eight months, he couldn’t work because of the untreated injury requiring the MRI.
We won’t even go into my mother-in-law who’s caring for the unknown intestinal mass via the advanced method of “hoping it’s not cancer, or at least not malignant”. How a private system is supposed to be better for the people with no way to pay for it is quite a mystery.
As I understand socialized medicine systems, your M-I-L is basically out of luck. Too old, too ill, too bad.
The difference between socialized and private is in who doesn’t get care. In the private system the poor and uninsured don’t get care. In the socialized system the elderly and people who want ‘elective’ procedures don’t get care.
Take your pick, decide who is more deserving, be prepared to show all work in reaching your answer.
The U.S. probably has some of if not the “best” healthcare insofar as our top hospitals and doctors are or rival the best in the world. If you look hard enough (and can afford it) you will probably find the “best” in this country.
in other words, the right tail of our health care curve probably extends farther, or is bigger, than most.
The U.S. has atrocious health care for the very poor. Compared to many industrialized nations, the LEFT hand tail of the health care curve probably extends farther, AND is bigger, than most.
Best?
Worst?
Depends on whether you happen to have money and/or good insurance.
Centralized health care (with a fixed budget) works by compressing the curve. You “fix” the left tail, so you get fewer people who are uninsured and who don’t get care. But in order to do so, you have to get that money from somewhere–and you have to to restrict either the ultimate level of quality, or the availability, or both.
So in order to get the uninsured to have care, you have to somehow lower the overall standard of care for the insured.
As FCH says, and i agree: There’s no easy answer to whether that’s a good idea.0
Actually, FCH – mil is poor and uninsured, rather than too old and too ill. She’s in general good health other than the alarming mass. Nor would she object to being put last on the waiting list after the younger sort. Certainly she’s far more agressive in pushing me to get my own sort of unknown mass taken care of than she is about her own – to the point that she would contribute to our expenses if we would let her.
In an ideal world, yes, everyone would get the healthcare they need, regardless of anything. In the world we have, prioritization is necessary, however distasteful and neglecting basic medical necessities (like diabetic testing supplies) for the young is an utter boneheadedly wrong way to go about it, regardless of how you get there. That one stint in the ICU for my neighbor cost the state about thirty times what providing his mother with the necessary equipment would have been.
See all these posts about healthcare? This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk about healthcare, cause we would hijack the thread.
Now would you all be responsible bloggers for a change and somebody start a healthcare thread on another blog or either here where it belongs.
( Note: This post is meant to be sarcastic and joking. I realize that emotion does not translate well over the internet so this note is for those that offend easily.)
Actually, Sailorman, our very poor get decent health care, in the same range of QoS as is received in the European countries. It’s our working poor – too rich for Medicaid, too poor for cash, uninsured – who have the problem.
Quote via Feminist Reprise:
“Healthism, simply put, is an overemphasis on keeping healthy. Social critic Robert Crawford believes that many persons today (particularly, he notes, the more affluent) are too focused on staying healthy. He suggests that people have become preoccupied with controlling the more manageable health factors like smoking or diet because they feel powerless to change major factors like financial uncertainty or potential nuclear disaster. When we are overly focused on healthiness or a “healthy lifestyle” as goals to strive for (or as the measure of a “healthy” society) we deflect attention from the more important goals of social justice and peace.
Crawford also points out that even though prevention is crucial, and dangerously glossed over by conventional medicine, it, too, can be overemphasized. In expanding the concept of prevention ever further, we risk defining more and more aspects of life in terms of health and illness–that is, according to a medical model. We may end up seeing exercise, eating, meditation, fresh air, dance, for example–all pleasures in their own right–simply as measures of our potential health or nonhealth. In this way, ironically, we further medicalize our lives.
Keeping healthy can also become a moral issue. Individuals are made to feel guilty for getting sick. People shake their heads disapprovingly over those who “don’t take care of themselves.” In many cases this amounts to blaming the victim; it shows a failure to recognize the social and economic influences on health habits and illness. With personal habits, too, a certain judgmentalness creeps in: “She should have more control over her smoking,” or “She should get more exercise, stop eating so much sugar.” Even when these are matters of personal choice, moralistic healthism is inappropriate. And it doesn’t help people change, even when they may want to.”
–The New Our Bodies, Ourselves
sailorman writes:
We could provide very high quality healthcare for the “uninsured” and probably save money doing it. The “uninsured” get healthcare in the most expensive place imaginable — the ER — at the worst possible time from a cost perspective — long after preventative medicine would have made it a lot cheaper to deal with.
Fix that and not only with the quality of care go up, but the cost will go down. It’s stupid-simple.
So in order to get the uninsured to have care, you have to somehow lower the overall standard of care for the insured.
Ah, the repeat something often enough and lies become truth. Can you lay out your logic on this so that I’m sure I’m addressing your statement correctly?
Robert Writes:
January 30th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Actually, Sailorman, our very poor get decent health care, in the same range of QoS as is received in the European countries. It’s our working poor – too rich for Medicaid, too poor for cash, uninsured – who have the problem.
And the thousands of uninsured “migrants” who illegally come across our southern border and show up at the hospital emergency room when they are hurt or sick. Then there are the millions of “undocumented workers” and their children who are already here receiving free healthcare under our current system. Those people are getting decent healthcare for free or almost free.
yet somehow our quality of care for the insured has been decreasing at the same time as the number of insured has also been decreasing…
I’m away from home at a conference for the next few days, so I can’t really participate in this thread. Thanks La-Di-Da for pointing out the problems with healthism (I don’t like the term, but think it’s an important concept).
The only other thing I want to say is that I live in a place with a socialised medical system, and I think a lot of authors have a very strange ideas about what it entails. My best friend’s medical care over her lifetime has cost well into 7 figures, as she isn’t yet thirty. The idea that Tapetum’s mother-in-law would automatically be considered too old or to ill under a socialised system is ridiculous. While the New Zealand health system used to be much better than it is now (privatisation by stealth has been government policy for 20 years) , the cases Tapetum mentions would all be better treated under the NZ system.
As I reread my post I realize i misspoke–that’ll teach me not to proofread. Sorry.
Universal health insurance doesn’t necessarily lower the overall standard of health care. The mean can remain the same or go up, as can the median.
It DOES, though, tend to reduce the availability of the far right end of the curve. In other words, the more “nonstandard” care (read: expensive and/or currently available only to those with excellent insurance) level usually can’t be maintained. It’s just too expensive.
That’s why a lot of places with socialized health care have better overall national health than we do. But in the more extreme treatment–access to a MRI for testing, for example, or speed in which one enters chemotherapy–we can be better for those who have access to it.
In the world of capitalism and well-insured people, i can hurt my knee playing soccer and be in a MRI the next day, having seen an orthopedist. If i am diagnosed withcaner, i can probably start radiation treatment fast fast fast.
In canada (which i realize isn’t the best, but am using as an example because I happen to know the stats) it can take weeks–months, even–to start radiation treatment. Of course, more people get other kinds of care.
Since I’m currently able to afford insurance, global insurance will probably lower my personal care. But I think it’s a good idea anyway. I just think we need to be upfront about it: you cannot simultaneously treat everyone and everything. So in order to help a lot of people, we’re going to have to take things away from someone.
Sailorman,
I can agree with a lot of what you say, but…
But in the more extreme treatment–access to a MRI for testing, for example, or speed in which one enters chemotherapy–we can be better for those who have access to it.
High-end treatment, fast access will always be available for those with enough money. Well, unless you make that illegal, but I don’t see that happening.
Make that all virtually all places with socialized health care. We spend more per capita in this country on health care than anyone on the planet, but our health scores – you pick the score – are a joke compared to, let’s say, our next competitor on price (Switzerland).
Don’t spend too much time worrying about access to health care for the rich. They’ll always get the best, in any system. Let’s talk about the rest of us.
I’m personally a fan of centralized or socialized health care. And since I am fortunate enough to live in massachusetts, I’m about to test it out. (For those who don’t know, MA has essentially initiated socialized health care, though it’s a bit more complex than that and isn’t named as such.)
The problem of course is that a lot of people talk about savings and limits and the like but NOBODY (myself included) is personallyhappy when it comes to them.
So it’s easy for me to understand in the abstract that the country may not be able to afford to give bypass surgery to every 85 year old who wants it, but it’s difficult in the personal if it’s my grandfather who is denied the surgery he needs to live a few extra years.
And that is the type of decisino which is necessary to succeed with socialized medicine. Sure, emergency care will still be there. But do you get a lot of expensive chemo to extend your life by 6 months? Do you get an expensive transplant to extend your life by a year? It’s all, sadly, costs and benefits.
I fear that those who DO currently have health care feel so entitled to the outstanding care they get now are going to fight tooth and nail against giving it up. Altruism only goes so far and it’s a hard issue.
Sailorman, yes indeed.
Health care is rationed everywhere, here and in socialized healthcare systems. In the latter, it is rationed by factors such as age, statistical risk/benefit calculations and the like. Here, it is rationed by ability to pay, arguably the worst imaginable system, since more weight is thereby given to wealthy 86 year olds than to poor 2 year olds.
Everyone has to give up something. The question is, who?
My daughter has lived for many years in Scotland, where health care is socialized. She had her first child by C-section because he was transverse, and it was considered the safest alternative. She loved it: no labor pains. So when it came to having her second, she wanted another C-section. Scottish National Health said, So sorry, we’ve decided you don’t need that.
Now, she could conceivably have paid for it herself, but that would have been big dollars, so, on balance, she decided to go with the program. My granddaughter Fiona was born vaginally, without incident, except that my daughter bitched and moaned a lot, during and after, about what an injustice childbirth is. :) Oh well.
Scotland is a fabulous place to be a young pregnant mother, and it’s a fabulous place to be a kid (health-wise, ignoring the weather). It’s not such a good place to be an old lady with cancer, or an old lady like my daughter’s mother-in-law, who needs a hip replacement. In that case, you must keep queue, or, natch, pay for services yourself.
There are health insurance policies available in Scotland, to pay in case you decide that you want something National Health won’t pay for, or won’t pay for soon enough. But the rich always do well, under every system. As I said, I’m more worried about the rest of us.
Would Scottish National Health work here? I don’t think so. Europeans are very….docile, compared to Americans. Or that’s how they strike us. We need a system that works with the culture here. I think we can do it. I hope so, because the “system” we now have is in the process of hitting a brick wall at high speed.
I fear that those who DO currently have health care feel so entitled to the outstanding care they get now are going to fight tooth and nail against giving it up.
I’m not too sure about that. That will certainly be the case if the HI (Health Insurance) companies’ propaganda is unchallenged.
I have the best healthcare coverage I have heard of. We pay $65/month to cover my spouse and myself. There is a $20 co-pay for Doctor visits, prescriptions are $5/$20/$40. Dental is covered by a fee schedule w/ no maximum, vision is fully covered w/ $20 co-pay and includes lasik procedures. Approval is done by my co-worker, so nothing is ever denied for my family. No referrals are necessary to see a specialist. Alternative medicine, massage & chiropractors are covered to a limited extent. I would still prefer centralized universal healthcare because I know that there is a real possibility that I will not have this coverage available for the rest of my career. In my last job, I could’ve had a major medical policy (nothing covered up to $5,000, then 60% coverage for anything after) for my wife and myself for $400/mo.
I would rather lose some of what I have now than take the risk of going back to what was available in my past jobs.
Jake – in your plan, who’s actually paying the bill? (It clearly isn’t you at $65/month.)
If the question is who pays the remainder of the monthly premium, my employer does.
That is a large part of the point that I’m trying to make. I am in an exceptional situation in terms of HI in that the benefits I receive here are probably worth 10k/yr for my family. I’d rather become part of a 300 million person insurance pool and give up some of my perks than wind up in my last HI situation. A single payer health care system winds up costing less than and providing the same or better coverage than my previous 3 HI situations.
I getcha. Thanks for the clarification.