Let’s kick everyone with a dangerous job… like, oh, being a firefighter… off the state’s health insurance, too! Or people with really high-stress jobs! I hear those folks have much higher rates of heart attacks and strokes. What about all these people who catch a drink after work at Brandon’s? Can we really afford what they’re doing to their livers?
Crap like this is exactly what gives me great pause about the government getting further involved in health care.
People, even if we all lived in very soft (but not so soft you might accidentally suffocate) hypoallergenic chambers eating the perfect mix of nutritious foods and exercising in some manner that never lead to injury, people would still get horrendously sick and die. And, if you’re chipping in for their health care, it’s still going to cost you.
There is no death-proof. There is no way to move through the world to guarantee perfect health.
People who smoke their whole lives can die in car accidents. People who never smoke can get lung cancer.
And here’s the other thing–I don’t know if you’ve looked around but our state is hurting. You’re really going to put us in the position of driving off the best candidates for jobs because we won’t offer them health-insurance? That seems short-sighted.
Or what about a person like me? I don’t smoke. But I’ll have a cigar every couple of years or so in honor of my Grandpa (which then, the next day, usually serves to remind me why I don’t smoke). If you catch me on the day I’m remembering my Grandpa, I can’t get health insurance?
And please, bring on the lawsuits from the holy people of religions where tobacco smoke is an integral part of their ceremonies. You’re going have the State of Tennessee start penalizing people for how they practice their religions? Only if you want expensive lawsuits we’re bound to lose.
Or are we under the impression that only Christians work for the State?
Filed under: The State of Tennessee
Education and environmental improvements work far better than prohibition or punishment when it comes to mitigating or eliminating risky personal behavior – whether that’s smoking or anything else. I thought we were the ones that understood that?
They decided to start charging state employees who smoke extra for their health insurance a year and a half ago. The legislature made them delay the implementation a year but I think it went into effect last week on January 1.
I think it was in a Thomas Frank book where I read that the huge difference between New Deal-era government and today’s obscene emulation of government is that the New Deal ushered in people (bureaucrats, even) who really cared about making things better for average people, because they mostly were average people who may have had some education. So the New Deal, even though it was brilliant public works policy with one arm tied behind its back, worked because the people in charge and the people down the line mostly wanted to make it work.
Now we have unreliable government by design. Almost every senator or representative is either a lobbyist slumming and shilling or a lobbyist-in-training. It’s all about making and maintaining policy that maximizes short-term gain for corporate interests. But I blame us, the voters. After WWII the effects of empire started to catch up to us, and the resulting spiritual rot led to us succumbing to consumerism and other anti-democratic ‘isms’.
That’s why we have shitty government that can’t be trusted with something that is conceptually taken for granted by other post-industrial democracies.
[...] Cat Pants » Oooo, Mike Turner, I Have an Even Better Idea!Posted 49 minutes [...]
Damn it, Sam, I am never going to be able to argue with you after that calendar. Your point is on target. I’m just not completely sure it applies entirely here.
I talked with B recently about how there is this disconnect where, instead of voting for one’s best interest, people have started voting aspirationally and hurt themselves in the process. I used the example of a childhood friend whose family fell into hard times I don’t think they ever climbed back out of, through no real fault of their own. While railing against my dad’s union affiliation, she also informed me that she “[didn't] believe in a chicken in every pot.” There was a sneer on her lips as she said it. I was probably all of twelve, and it was before Lewis Black’s “If It Weren’t For My Horse” routine, but it had the same effect on my mind. They could have used that proverbial chicken. There’s no tactful way to ask, “How can you hate poor people so much when you’re poor,” especially to an emotional tweenage girl, so I didn’t.
When any Democrat – much less a big, middle-aged union firefighter – is talking about excluding employees from receiving health insurance for any reason, I similarly can’t wrap my brain around it. It is another “if it weren’t for my horse” moment for me. I can’t help but wonder – have you forgotten who you are?
I agree that this is a dangerous line to tread…what’s next? If you get hired by the state and you’re overweight you can’t get health insurance? Smoking is a choice and smokers should have to pay higher health insurance premiums because they incur higher health care costs, but cutting them out entirely isn’t the answer. The state should focus on incentivizing quitting amongst its employees.
Liz, that’s what they claim they’re doing by charging smokers extra per my earlier comment. They don’t mention smokers costing the health care plan more, they say they’re trying to incentivize people to quit and using the extra money smokers pay to fund quit smoking programs.
What, even, is the definition of a smoker? Could you lose your health insurance if you have a cigarette when you drink?
I just don’t think it’s the government’s business to dictate legal behaviors. It’s not illegal to smoke; it’s not the government’s business then to punish you if you do.
And I’m with Samantha Y. on this. Have we forgotten who we are?
Poor people hate other poor people precisely because they’re impoverished. It’s not just that they’re aspiring to someday align their self interest with the rich. In fact, I think this isn’t really a factor in the reasoning of the very poor. They might hope to win the lottery, or in the case of the middle class they might recognize a path to wealth if things go well for them, but for the most part it’s not a well-defined ambition. There is the psychology of self-hatred at work; poor people don’t enjoy suffering the final indignity of thinking of themselves as poor, so they refuse to admit it or at least sympathize with those they recognize as poor. When it comes down to it, though, I think it’s really about competition. When you feel the very real scarcity of resources in your daily life – whether that is a lack of food or health care or the inability to buy a winter coat or the threat of not having a roof over your head next month – our natural response as human beings is to feel competitive towards those who might get the food or clothing or health care or shelter we need.
That’s why the most impoverished nations on Earth are typically the most war-torn, and that’s why those living in poverty can sympathize with the social Darwinism of the GOP. Ideally this competition should be directed towards the rich, since they are in fact enjoying far more disposable wealth, but the fact is most poor people aren’t familiar enough with rich people to feel that sense of competition. The people living on Jo Jefferson don’t often venture into Green Hills, and when they do, it might as well be a foreign country. The lifestyle difference is so profound the class distinction is clear, and the individual is left to fight over the scraps with the people in their own neighborhood before they feel comfortable taking it from the wealthy who live in a completely different world and who exhibit such a conspicuous superiority.
Furthermore, there is an issue of pride. American conservatives have waged a highly successful propaganda war against the poor, informing those who are confident enough to demand basic human rights at the expense of the wealthy that they are lazy, self-entitled, leaching bums if and when they do. When all a person has is their self-respect, they’re not about to surrender it for the promise of a little more material comfort. The Horatio Alger mythos was designed by a multi-millionaire, not to pass along money-earning wisdom, but to keep the poor from taking what is theirs. It worked.
There’s also a philosophical problem. If people “deserve” these things or have a God-given “right” to them, and you don’t have them, then why are you so lacking? Is something wrong with you? Does God not love you as much as He does the wealthy or the poor who are getting help? Most people would rather deny their own rights (along with the rights of others in their own class) than answer these questions affirmatively, and unfortunately it takes education to give them healthier ways of analyzing the problem, which is again something the poor don’t often get.
You know who else uses a lot of health care for a preventable condition? People having babies. Perhaps Mike Turner would like fertile women and pregnant women to be disallowed coverage as well.
Samantha, as usual I ended my little rant without adding a key point: my ideal is universal coverage paid for through a government-run or controlled single-payer entity. That’s why I only vote for candidates who are likely to implement such a plan. Such candidates are the kind who still believe in government of, by, and for the people; and they would be most likely to work toward the ideal without sabotaging it or compromising it (to death) to benefit the status quo. Quaint, I know, but still possible and desirable.
Also, what Amber says.
B., in answer to the question posed by you and Samantha, In this nation I don’t believe there is a consensus as to ‘who we are’. That’s always been up for grabs. I think the movers and shakers of the continuing right-wing revolution in this country understand this, which is why they’ve been so successful. Those of us who imagine ourselves liberal or progressive are prone to confusing what we really are with what we think we should be. I’m not saying we should be cynical, but we should be more realistic.
That’s my ideal too.
As for the question I pose: I was very specifically pointing out that Rep. Turner’s proposal is incongruent with who he is demographically.
I still think it can be extrapolated out to the rest of us. I think too many conservative voters vote based on what they feel “should be,” instead of what is. I hear too many working and middle-class people worrying about “death taxes,” or what happens in other people’s bedrooms, or whether an illegal immigrant might somehow benefit from a streamlined health care system the rest of us could use too, when those issues are never going to touch their lives. They’ll even hand over power to people who don’t give a damn about doing things that make their lives better over these issues. Meanwhile their kids languish in a public education system that ranks 41st in the nation, babies die in Memphis at a rate that should shame the entire country, and unemployment is still over 10%.
Well, come now, though, let’s not over-generalize about poor people–why poor people do this, why poor people do that. They aren’t some “they.” They are us. Ask any church. People with the least are often the ones who give the most, for example.
And in a state like Tennessee, to sit around and talk about poor people as if they are not us is even more ridiculous. We are all in positions of having not and of aspirational thinking. A lot of people in this state are suffering.
And there’s something really disheartening about hearing someone with power deciding that the best way to wield that power is against suffering people.
Our unemployment rate is so dismal. If someone is the best qualified candidate for a job, but they HAVE to have a job that provides health insurance, we are going to lose that candidate. Unless, of course, there’s no other job for that person to take; then we’re benefiting from his suffering by being able to screw him over because he has no other option.
Kicking people when they’re down is just not where I want to be politically.
Really, everything I wrote in the above scree comes out of my own personal experience. Our household income exceeded $10K annually only once, for about 18 months, until I started supporting us in high school, so I know what it’s like to be poor. I know what it’s like to struggle to afford a gallon of milk, but still refuse to go on food stamps, mostly because of the stigma attached to it. I know what it’s like to go without electricity because you can’t pay the bill, or get evicted from an apartment because you can’t pay the rent, even though you’re working two or three jobs and the hospital bills are mounting up from something as simple as a broken leg. I’ve observed the same problems among most of my family and friends. You’re right that it’s wrong to generalize, but I think generally, most of what I wrote holds true. I was a staunch conservative before I was a flaming liberal, and it was only the special blessing of an education (that the rest of the kids I grew up with never got) that finally shook me out of it.
Frankly, the primary reason I’ve never felt comfortable in the Democratic Party is precisely because of the “they” issue. Until very recently, most of the Democrats I’ve met who were active in party politics were wealthy, and had always been wealthy. Their positions obviously had more sympathy for the poor than the policies of Republicans, but when it came down to really understanding the experience of being poor, of really knowing the poor and listening to them, it seemed all they could manage was some form of condescension and/or paternalism. Poor people were still “the other.” Democrats might want to provide for them more than Republicans, but it was still another form of marginalization in the political process. This goes back to what I said about self-respect; one of the reasons I think Republicans are so successful recruiting voters against their self interest is because their mythos offers more dignity to the poor. It’s not real, of course, but it allows people with next-to-nothing to still belong to the upper middle class by virtue of their ideals alone.
Amber, it doesn’t help that the Democrats don’t really represent working people now. Again, it’s risky to generalize, but I think another problem we have is that too many middle and upper-class liberals and progressives are afflicted with what you describe. We have sympathy for the poor, but not enough empathy.
I sense that the Democratic Party is being buoyed by a) those who can afford to turn their backs on those less fortunate, but they don’t know or remember what it’s like to really be poor and, without that experience, feel justified in settling for the lip service and ceremonial crumbs tossed to the interests of the poor and the struggling; these folks mean well, but they vote for politicians who represent the interests of concentrated wealth at the expense of real progress. Then there’s b) the aspirational folks who know things have to get better and want the Democratic Party to enact policy platforms. They’ve not given up on democracy, but they’ve bought into the fact that voting for nice-talking pro-corporate types is the best chance they’ve got at improving their lot. Finally, there’s c) the folks who see the discrepancies and refuse to ignore them, but believe that if they organize and try hard enough they can move the Democratic Party onto a different path. I’m assuming that there’s a lot of overlap among all three of those general categories.
I guess I’m trying to illustrate that I don’t believe any group has a monopoly on self-delusion or self-defeatism. It cuts across all party lines and demographics. The sooner the majority of us can accept that we’re all in this together and that you can’t just say ‘fuck them’ about anyone, the better.
[...] called Turner fluffy. Conservatives aren’t the only ones who are upset, though. Aunt B., of Tiny Cat Pants fame, doesn’t like the idea one [...]
Aunt B.,
I don’t know why anyone is surprised by Representative Turner’s proposal. The one absolutely certain result of greater government health care, especially single payer, will be greater regulation of activities like smoking, eating and drinking.
The logic is quite arresting. Because the diseases related to tobacco, alcohol, carbohydrates etc can lead to medical costs that are greater than most individuals’ health care taxes, government will hold down costs by controlling behavior. The nationalization of health care will result in the nationalization of health as Representative Turner is so marvelously demonstrating.
And Aunt B. is spot on about what defines ‘smoking.’ Law being a blunt insturment, the safest course is to simply outlaw smoking. Perhaps there might be limits, like two cigarettes per day. That would certainly clear the way for similar restrictions on food and drink.
This discussion reminds me of that great scene in ‘A Man for All Season’ where More’s future son-in-law talks about “cutting down every law in England to get at the Devil” and More points out that, having done so, “where will you hide when the Devil turns round on you, all the Laws being flat?”
Turner is just an early sign of the Devil turning.
The one absolutely certain result of greater government health care, especially single payer, will be greater regulation of activities like smoking, eating and drinking.
Funny how that isn’t the case in countries where they have “government health care,” including places with single payer. Mark, do you think that USians are just bigger busybodies than anyone else in the developed world, or what?
Again no one reads the bills. Everybody gets to keep their health insurance, this bill in no-way has any effect on current State Employee’s. The Bill only talks about new hires. The cost of our health plan is going up 91/2 percent this year this means cuts to our plan, forgive me for trying to save what we currently have.
Nm,
Representative Turner’s bill is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about. “Busybodies” is not the word I would use. But look around at the efforts to ban junk food and transfats and such. Not to ‘educate’ or ‘limit’ but ban.
Note Aunt B’s point about smoking.
Why should certain types of foods be different. Think cheese and heart disease.
Rep. Turner: I don’t think anyone missed that, but I do thank you for clarifying and for sharing the extent of the rate hike. The private sector has been coping with this problem year over year for some time and can definitely empathize with trying to find a balance between cutting benefits and moving the books into the red.
At the same time, there is an inherent danger in putting access to employee benefits – even those of future employees – up against a lifestyle test. I hope you will consider alternative methods of shoring up the budget, including passing along some or all of the increased cost of insuring smokers on to the smokers themselves, rather than shutting them out of the program entirely. Right now, CoverTN and CoverKids are closed to new enrollees. What’s a smoker with an uninsurable spouse or kid to do? How long do they have to have quit before they’re not considered a “smoker”?
That said – until the economic climate improves and some people who have been postponing retirement finally decide (or are able) to retire, it’s going to become more and more expensive to provide insurance for the state workforce regardless, even if everyone employed by the state all started popping Chantix tomorrow. It’s aging. It’s not turning over. Taking steps to ensure that all employees, but especially older ones, seek regular preventive care and catch problems before they become expensive would be a good first step in reducing costs at large to the state.
Hmm, It seems to me that rather than dick over new people, we need to think of creative ways of foisting our problems off on others. Could we sneak our state employees on to Kentucky’s insurance? Could we mint our own currency and then pass a law that says all doctors have to take it? Ooo, or could we get a list of all the people in the state who have good insurance and all get plastic surgery to look like them and just use theirs?
OH MY GOD! People, I know what the solution is. Every state employee is required to marry someone who works for Vanderbilt and get on their insurance.
Boys, the bidding for me starts at $1500.
Aunt B., A good friend of mine, having heard of your intellect, writing ability and wit tells me to offer $2,750 with the caveat (catveat) that he is an ailuraphobe so you can bring the dog and even the Butcher but not the cats.
Aw now, Mark, you’re making me blush with all that sweet talk, but you tell your friend that I’m going to have to decline because “Tiny ______ Pants” is no name for a blog. I’m contractually obligated to have a tiny cat.
So, Mark, you figure our problem in this country is that we’re mean spirited busybodies in a way that no one else in the industrialized world is? OK, could be. Why do you think that is?
Nm,
No. I think that sometimes we allow good ideas to go too far. These days it is an epidemic.
As they use to say in the Old West Calf-Roped.
NM, I think your rhetorical question is the answer. We don’t “allow good ideas to go too far.” We cling to bad ones for dear life because we’re mean-spirited busybodies. If we are suffering and perceive that someone else is not, we’d rather drag that person down beneath us than try to lift ourselves up.
Well, Sam, that would be closer (though not identical) to my own take on things. But since Mark is so sure that “gov’t health care” would mean the oppression of smokers and others, but doesn’t dispute that this isn’t the case in any place where there is “gov’t health care,” then clearly the future he envisions is the result of USAmericanness, not of health care. And I’d like to get his take on why that is. I mean, if he’s right that in the US we would allow a good idea (“gov’t health care”) to go too far (oppression of smokers), but in other places they go with the good idea and avoid the too-far part, what does he think it is about the USA makes us do that? But he’s sort of not answering, just reiterating that we mess things up here.
Sam,
That is a huge and mostly wrong view of others. It reeks of ‘I am holier that everybody else because I am so much more caring’ or some other ego problem.
nm,
Let me us two examples of good ideas taken to harmful extremes.
1) Gun rights. Traditionally Americans have generally supported the idea that people who want to own guns have a Constitutional Right to do so. Reasonable regulations did not result in nationwide opposition as when federal legislation made ownership of otherwise affordable machineguns much harder or when certain modified shotguns were banned.
Today many defenders of Gun Rights want to read the Second Amendment so literally that carying a sawed off shotgun into a day care center is perfectly legal. The whole ‘guns in bars’ and ‘guns in parks’ controversies actually have done more to damage gun rights than leaving the existing laws in place had ever done. And success on these issues will not be the end. There will be new demands for weakening gun laws.
2) Church and State. For over 150 years America manged to balance the relationship of Church and State imperfectly but successfully. Public schools often featured Bible readings and Christian prayers and city parks featured nativity scenes. Yet other religions flourished here as demonstrated by the successes of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and many more Faiths.
Then in the 60s a more extreme interpretation of the 1st Amendment began reshaping how the relationship between Church and State had to be viewed. School-sponsored prayer was removed. Nativity scenes were banned from public property.
Did all this improve the relationship between Church and State? Of course not. It worsened the relationship. Like the effort to broaden Second Amendment Rights, this reinterpretation of the First Amendment has had the opposite effect.
And every new instance of schools prohibiting ‘Christmas’ parties or Christmas carols only worsens the situation because, like allowing guns in bars, it represents a good idea (no State Religion) taken to an absurd extreme.
So, to answer your question, I am sure that nationalized health care will lead to absurd extremes because America is now driven by a mania for this sort of intellectual insanity.
Do you think that Representative Turner’s suggestion is reasonable?
How about the Alabama initiiative where state employees who are smokers get charged an extra $25 dollars?
What do you think of John Edwards’ suggestion that under his health care plan, everyone would be required to have regular checkups?
If mandatory checkups as part of national health care are a good idea then aren’t sanctions for those who don’t take care of themselves a logical conclusion? After all, aren’t people who refuse to take care of themselves really stealing from the rest of us?
Mark, my question was not whether you think people in the US carry good ideas to extremes; obviously you do think so. My question was (and remains) what about our society you think causes this problem.
NM,
Apologies.
My guess is that it is a combination of factors and I think that it is actually an aberration. I tend to see Americans as pragmatic in the sense that we place great faith in Ideas but also have a strong sense of the limits of pure ideology.
The current fetish for ideological purity on both the Left and Right and by advocates of individual Ideas (Free Markets, Separation of Church and State, Guns etc) is not unprecedented in American History but it seems to be more of a mindset now than just the result of divisions on one big issue.
It also leads to a great degree of incoherence. For example, many extremists on the 1st and 2nd Amendments tend to look at the other amendment in a manner that is totally contradictory to how they see the other. Both want to read one quite literally and the other quite narrowly. Seems to me that one ought to read amendments pretty much consistently.
OK, I have to admit that I’m mystified over how you connect your “fetish for ideological purity on both the Left and Right” with the idea that we mustn’t have any national health care plan because it will lead to the persecution of smokers.
NM,
That is because I do not oppose health care reform. I think we need to rein in insurance companies, increase access to care (particularly primary care) and encourage wellness. There are some specifics I would favor like allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, more home visiting to strengthen new families, more competition in the drug market, greater access to Medical Savings Accounts etc.
But I believe we can fix specific problems without some massive and uncertain ‘reform’ that is so vague that many provisions are not understood by the authors.
I also think that the argument that health care is a ‘Right’ rather than a function of good public policy is dangerous. Similarly, I think that the current proposals are designed to lead to a single payer system that will give the federal government greater power to regulate my life.
Representative Turner’s proposal is just a small effort to use health care costs to justify controlling private behavior. And so are efforts to ban certain foods like trans fats.
As someone once said, first they came for the smokers and because I was not a smoker, I did not cry out. Then they came for the drinkers and…
No, Mark, really. How is “ideological purity” going to lead to persecution of smokers? How do Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the UK, and on and on manage to avoid persecuting smokers with their various forms of “national health care” and yet we will (you are sure) be horrible about it? Because, I have to tell you, those countries have ideological purists, too. Hell, they have parliamentary governments, which supposedly privilege extremism by definition. And yet they don’t persecute smokers. There is no logic in the claims you are making.
BTW, I decided not to engage you on your claim that everything was peachy for non-Christians in this country before we started, you know, actually demanding that Christianity not get special gov’t privileges. Because, obviously, you don’t have a clue about that, so there’s no point. But please, take it from this non-Christian: trying to equate Mike Turner’s proposal (wrong-headed though I think it is) with genocide is pretty disgusting. The former just trivializes difficulties, but the latter is vile.
NM,
After decrying the dangers of people taking things to extremes, why would I compare Turner’s proposal to genocide? I was making a point about how laws that target smokers will not be the last efforts to control our behavior using health care as a justification.
As for us versus nations with nationalized health care, I suspect that if we looked closely, we would find a number of government imposed restrictions that you would not like. I do think that the intellectual climate in America today encourages this sort of extremism.
“Peachy?’ Did I write “peachy?” Perhaps I should hire you to translate me into English.
I think I said that we managed the relationship between Church and State “imperfectly but successfully.” Do you disagree? Did I fail to mention a couple of religious wars? Perhaps a series of pogroms on the steppes of Kansas? Perhaps you are thinking of the Abolitionists who championed Nullification of the Fugitive Slave Laws.
But tell me how children holding Christmas parties in schools or displaying a nativity scene at Centennial Park is special privileges. I would call that a reflection of the culture. And just because something reflects the majority does not make it bad. After all, shared customs and traditions help unify our multi-national population.
I have no idea why you would compare Turner’s proposal to genocide. Nevertheless, you did so. If you don’t know the context of “first they came for the Jews” I suggest you find out, and use it only when appropriate.
As for the rest of your nonsense, I suggest that you think about how you would like to live in a society and go to a school that ignored Christian holidays completely (scheduling school exams on them, for instance, or letting you observe them only by taking vacation days) but mandated your attendance at celebrations of all Muslim holidays; ignored (or even made fun of) the content of Christianity but was saturated with Muslim content; forced you to opt out of group activities if you couldn’t share their religious elements; stuff like that. Tell me how you’d flourish. Not recognizing how Christianity has been given a position of privilege in US society is kind of myopic.
Now, I’m done with that topic; it’s too big a derailment of B’s topic. To get back to it, I’m impressed by the way that when you are asked about specifics of the oppression you see lurking, you retreat to being “sure” that there are regulations I wouldn’t like. I’ll be waiting to hear what some of them are.
The whole thing is pretty well academic anyhow. How do you figure out who smokes? Most likely it’s just going to force state employees to lie about it and then have to wait until they get back into their car at the end of the work day to light up. The world really doesn’t need any more grumpy state employees.
Or maybe we just write in the conditions commonly caused by smoking as not covered by the state insurance plan.
W, there’s nicotine/cotinine testing available for detection, so there’s the potential for the scenario to include blood, urine or saliva sampling (not sure if that has been proposed).
Man, though, do you think the poor folks who had to be the nicotine investigators for the state could get insurance or would knowingly taking a job that exposed you to the ill-effects of second-hand smoke rule you out?
One day it will get to the point of madness. Sorry one day you will die, so we have deamed you un-insurable!