A Usenet persona calling itself Franklin wrote:


However, diabetes, broken ankles and heart disease are not a public health
threats, which means that the government has no call to impose the costs
of
treating such individual illnesses on others, because there is no exported
harm that justifies imposing this burden on others.


You don't think so?

Nope.

There are many ways that society pays the price for
illness beyond the obvious issues of contagion and health care costs. The
economic costs of so many Americans sitting at home because they're sick or
injured is astronomical when you consider things like lost productivity,
overinflated payrolls forced upon employers (which transfer those costs to
consumers), etc.

And who is responsible for inflated payrolls? The government.

When you're a small business owner and your employees are
home sick instead of working, you lose money.

So what? That's just part of the cost of doing business. Why should
government bail out the business owner? Why should I? If the business owner
fails to properly plan for sick employees, how is that MY problem and why
should I be required to pay for that employee's health care in order to
protect the business owner? If the business owner feels the employee is
essential, then the employer should purchase health insurance to keep him
healthy, not the government or the rest of us.

If his business fails because he plans and manages badly, why, that just
provides an opportunity for some new businessman to try to do it better.

So does the national economy.
It's been a long time since I've seen estimates of the figures, but they're
enormous.

Not really. You falsely presume that the economic impacts of absenteeism are
the responsibility of the government to ameliorate or prevent. That
responsibility lies with the employee and the employer and no one else.

Such things are only an impact because the government interferes with the
employer's ability to avoid or reduce those impacts.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser