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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: No smoking ban starts 1st July in UK
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-01-2007 09:11 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
It is a plain fact that if the market was left up to doing something about the problem then nothing would be done at all about it.
The only fact here is that the business feels that they are better off allowing smoking...rightly or wrongly. That is how a freemarket system works...the business tries to maximize profits...if it thinks keeping smoking does that, that is what it will do. Is your arguement that somehow the business thinks it will gain business by banning smoking in the business yet chooses lower profits? That flys against pure freemarket capitalism.
quote: Bobby Henderson
If we simply trusted everything to the market we would still be driving cars without any seat belts or airbags.
That is not true..."safety belts" were available LONG before they were legislated and airbags have their pros and cons. Neither should be legislated, in my opinion...but I'm also of the opinion that driving should be declared a right and not a priviledge. The right status would not bring about anymore reckless driving but it WOULD bring about due-process on the government which would stop all this willy-nilly associating everything with your license to drive.
The problem with seatbelt and other restraints as a legislation is that it invokes "prior-restraint" somthing that has been constitutionally tested and found to be unconstitutional. The safety device only comes into play IF something else horrible happens. It doesn't make the driver or the car safer just by driving down the street. Personally, I think you are stupid for not wearing a safety belt but I have no desire for government to being involved in my car like that.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Some issues require government intervention, management and law making to uphold public health and safety. Cigarette smoking is a dangerous, filthy, irresponsible activity. Cigarette smoke is hazardous to anyone breathing it.
I agree...get rid of it constitutionally. It would create a black market like drugs have (and alcohol did during "prohibition"). However, it is a legal substance for adults. I think I will see it effectively legislated out of existence without actually being banned...the final straw will be in all public spaces and in the home (may affect other people in the home, including children).
quote: Bobby Henderson
It is also a fact very few people choose to wait tables in a restaurant as a career choice. Not everybody can afford to go to college and choose exactly what they want to do for a living. Many are forced to choose just what's available.
While a tear jerker for some...it has NO basis in law...you are not entitled to any particular job, regardless of status or need. The business exists to profit its owners in any manner they see fit so long as it falls within constitutional law. The owners can use that business to benefit society or not but they are not under any obligation to ensure that a legal practice is not performed for the benefit of others. If the business wants to having smoking it it...then the employee or perspective employee should seek work somewhere that does not permit things they find offensive or dangerous. The old expression still applies..."if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."
quote: Bobby Henderson
People choose to smoke. It is not an activity that is mandatory for most -like having to drive a motor vehicle back and forth to work.
And people choose to drive too...it may surprise you that there people that don't drive...in fact driving is not a right...certainly anything so essential to existance in the US should be a right and afforded protections from government. But taken a step further...does one have to drive their own car? Does that car have to use gas?....and on and on.
quote: Bobby Henderson
The high taxes on cigarettes are supposed to help offset the costs that smoking causes against our health care system.
Here is a realization for you...taxes on cigarettes and gas and just about anything else does not just go to where they are supposed to go...if they did...roads would have plenty of money and cig taxes would more than cover the health associated issues...but that money goes to every program a government can get their hands on. Remember the "BIG TOBACCO" settlement for billions? What percentage of that went to tobacco health related issues? Wasn't it something like 20% or less?
quote: Bobby Henderson
The idea that our high health care costs are only do to with malpractice lawsuits is just crap.
You are very much wrong on that one...legal issues easily double the cost of health care. Every drug that is invented goes through a huge expense to ward off potential lawsuits....even drugs that make it through FDA can later be found to cause problems and it is big time lawsuit. These lawsuits drive up drug costs substantially (more than double). Lawsuits force doctors to perform many more tests to cover their asses which substantially increse health costs just at that phase and each one of those tests and each piece of equipment, drug or other apparatus also had the legal liability. One thing you can do in this country is sue the crap out of anybody for anything...except a DA...they are supposed to be self-policed.
Every one of those settlements/suits cost EVERYONE else from that point on...the price of the drugs and the medical procedures goes up to cover those costs...these business are not going to just roll over and die...they will raise their prices to cover such costs and they ALL get hit with them.
quote: Bobby Henderson
But the main thing causing our high health care costs is demand for health care.
Well that is hard to argue against...the Freemarket with its supply and demand figures that demand will cause price increases.
The problem is health care has ALWAYS had 100% demand...sooner or later (normally just the birthing process itself) people will need a doctor and his/her magic medicine. However, this is the arguement for universal health care coverage like we have for education, police and fire protection because they all fall in the same category. Essentials of life and society.
The whole concept of health "insurance" is flawed. Insurance works by more people putting in than taking out. Like car insurance...hopefully more people are driving than having accidents by a pretty fair margin. It is the only way it works. The same is not the case for health insurance...EVERYONE takes out and most do it every year. Some more than others based on health needs.
Another big factor in the cost of health care is the the whole insurance thing to begin with...HMOs...they make huge amounts of money (why not, they are a for-profit business...they are supposed to)....however for them to make those huge sums of money it means that money that is lining CEO's pockets and other investors is money that is NOT being put into health care...it once again points back to something that more exactly fits a governement provided service than a private industry. The Health insurance industry has no real oversight. How can there be any real oversight when the insurance company gets to decide what is covered and what is not. You need someone that is accountable to those being served, not shareholders doing that oversight. That is why our system of laws has three branches with safeguards to prevent them from getting into bed with one another...the HMOs don't have any of those safeguards and they affect everyone's life.
There are places where I do not believe a freemarket is the best system for this country...health care I'm coming the quick conclusion to is one of them. It for sure needs oversight and regulation far in excess of what it currently has.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-01-2007 11:49 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
The only fact here is that the business feels that they are better off allowing smoking...rightly or wrongly. That is how a freemarket system works...the business tries to maximize profits...if it thinks keeping smoking does that, that is what it will do.
Very often the interest of maximizing profits goes against the interests of public safety. This is one of those cases.
quote: Steve Guttag
That is not true..."safety belts" were available LONG before they were legislated and airbags have their pros and cons.
Those items were available as an option. They were not included in all vehicles until the laws mandated them to be installed as standard equipment.
quote: Steve Guttag
Personally, I think you are stupid for not wearing a safety belt but I have no desire for government to being involved in my car like that.
The problem is this gets back in part to the high costs of paying for unpaid health care bills.
There is no shortage of retards in my state who deliberately choose to drive without wearing a seatbelt in open defiance of the state law. They crash on a gravel section line road and are ejected from the vehicle. Many are dead at the scene when that happens, but quite a few actually survive with critical injuries...and leave their local hospital and the taxpayers saddled with hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars worth of unpaid medical bills.
quote: Steve Guttag
While a tear jerker for some...it has NO basis in law...you are not entitled to any particular job, regardless of status or need. The business exists to profit its owners in any manner they see fit so long as it falls within constitutional law.
Escalating worker's comp insurance premiums would interfere with a business owner deliberately running as unhealthy a workplace as he wanted. OSHA and EPA do have authority to intercede in certain environments. And there's always the threat of some enterprising law firm jumping into the fray to establish a legal precedent if a specific law like a cigarette ban in restaurants wasn't already established.
Our business pays for its painters to get tested quarterly for harmful levels of certain chemicals that could potentially build up in their blood streams because of their jobs. We would prefer they not develop liver cancer. Sometimes being a moral human being matters a little more than a little extra profit on that balance sheet.
quote: Steve Guttag
Here is a realization for you...taxes on cigarettes and gas and just about anything else does not just go to where they are supposed to go...if they did...roads would have plenty of money and cig taxes would more than cover the health associated issues...but that money goes to every program a government can get their hands on. Remember the "BIG TOBACCO" settlement for billions? What percentage of that went to tobacco health related issues? Wasn't it something like 20% or less?
I thought a bunch of that settlement money was still tied up in endless appeals. I'm sure all the lawyers will be sure to bleed as much of that money away in their legal costs. Surely a great deal of the rest will be misappropriated.
Ultimately, the only good thing I see about cigarette taxes is how they work in a punitive manner on the smokers themselves. It is an increasingly costly incentive for them to quit. That's been the main thing that has caused several of my co-workers to quit smoking.
quote: Steve Guttag
You are very much wrong on that one...legal issues easily double the cost of health care. Every drug that is invented goes through a huge expense to ward off potential lawsuits....even drugs that make it through FDA can later be found to cause problems and it is big time lawsuit.
It's not that simple.
If the drug industry had such money problems, it would not be the #1 ranked source of advertising revenue. The drug industry spends far more money on advertising than any other industry in the world. They even spend a lot more on advertising than they do on research and development.
Overall, I think the malpractice law firms, insurance companies, hospital corporations and drug companies are all in loose collusion with each other. They do their little finger pointing blame game dance over who is causing health care costs to rise and then all give themselves huge pay raises every year. They can do that when they have a giant blank check coming from the American government. I contend we already have a form of government subsidized "socialized medicine." We just have the world's most retarded form of it.
quote: Steve Guttag
The problem is health care has ALWAYS had 100% demand...sooner or later (normally just the birthing process itself) people will need a doctor and his/her magic medicine. However, this is the arguement for universal health care coverage like we have for education, police and fire protection because they all fall in the same category. Essentials of life and society.
This assumes the general public in the United States has always had the same level of health.
While the rate of smoking is on a steady decline we're seeing steady increases in rate of obesity, heart disease and adult onset diabetes. Our population is not nearly as active as it was 20 or 30 years ago. We also have 100 million more people in this country than we did 30 years ago. All of this leads to rapidly increasing demand.
I agree we need some sort of health insurance system that offers at least some basic coverage to all citizens in this country. I think we can have such a system while preserving some of the for-profit oriented systems offering higher quality care. However, for such a system to work I think the system has to heavily stress the importance of preventative health care. We don't have this in America right now.
Our system is currently designed to react to personal health disasters and actually penalize those who want to get preventative check ups. Basically everyone is thrown into the high priced for-profit system whether he can afford it or not. To me it's like the equivalent of the auto industry only selling luxury vehicles that cost $100,000 and higher.
My boss had a stress test recently that involved running on a treadmill and blowing into a tube and having blood work done. The bill for that: $5000 -just for a set of routine, diagnostic tests. Meanwhile a bartender I know just had breast augmentation surgery. Her bill for that: $3000.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-02-2007 09:12 AM
quote: Ken McFall
Has anyone else seen 'Sicko' and is it accurate or, as often happens, taking the worst case senario?
I haven't seen it, but I suspect that it is an accurate reflection of the worst-case senario; i.e. it is not just made up, but chooses worst cases to report on.
We often hear of people costing the NHS vast sums by self-inflicted illness, e.g. by smoking. I wonder if this is actually true. If they lived a different lifestyle then the NHS might not have the cost of treating the disease that they have, but on the other hand they would probably live longer, possibly through a long period of old age, with the various chronic illnesses and need for care which that can involve. I really have no idea which would impose the greater cost on the system.
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