No! Just cuase someones fat doesn't mean they have no rights!

Quote from Mr.Ford

No! Just cuase someones fat doesn't mean they have no rights!

What are you on?

In a private healthcare system, if it costs more to treat them they will be charged more. The company has to make a profit. This is the right of the company (if there is no increased cost then there can be no increase in price; price discrimination of this manner is only possible in a monopoly market - something healthcare is not -so the consumer is driven elsewhere by it. Hence the wonders of capitalism).

In a nationalised healthcare system they basically have to pay insurance. Premiums go up if the risk is higher. Not doing so is removal of the rights of people who took the time to exercise. If they are obese because of momo syndrome or some other chronic disease then obviously it's not their fault, but when someone's just overindulged themselves without thinking about the consequences it cannot be the perogative of the majority to pay for it.

If it's not glandular or whatever then sure, it'll encourage people to lose weight. Everyone hates looking at fatties.

Quote from Veteran Noob

Thats fantastic, if the individual already has preexisting conditions. However, this debate is about if they should be charged more in the start, because of their high risk to develop these conditions. If a doctor checks you individually, and then sees your obese, should that be a factor that will increase you costs?

And what would those increased costs do? Encourage them to lose weight? That's not a call anyone should be making, especially the people who would be offering the healthcare they'd be paying more for.

If that's the case anyone can claim healthcare is actually trying to profit through discrimination. There's no medical or financial necessity for it. Just because they have an increased risk of developing conditions they'd have to pay to get treated for doesn't mean that treatment should cost more.

I don't play this card often but anyone who thinks otherwise is seriously uninformed in discrimination laws. You're wrong. This isn't a debate.

Just to clarify, have you been arguing against any of my points at all or are we on the same side?

I'm speaking in terms of private healthcare, I don't care to know much about national healthcare or how it works so I'm not going to try to defend that.

Ok. Yeah, in private healthcare there is no reason whatsoever that the obese should pay more unless anything special is required for whatever they've got.

I think the possibility of claims of discrimination outweighs the benefits of increased costs.

Quote from Ash

I think the possibility of claims of discrimination outweighs the benefits of increased costs.

Agreed.

Ok Exilement, for the sake of the debate, now it is purely focused on Nationalized Healthcare.

obviously they should pay more, they chose to be fat therefor they should chose to pay more.

National healthcare essentially is insurance. Obese people are high risk. It's as simple as that. It wouldn't be any more discriminatory than the tax on alcohol and tobacco.

Within a free market - private healthcare, they'd naturally have to pay more. And yes I think that's reasonable. What we're doing about this matter in Sweden is to tax (well, we tax everything but) cigarettes and alcohol, and soon sugar as well. The problem with taxation is that it's both inefficient (it passes through a large beuraucracy) and kills the competitive business climate that we're all gaining from :)

Private Healthcare <3<3

We don't necessarily all gain from competiton. If firms are forced to drive their prices down then profit margins are cut and workers may have to either take a pay cut or get made redundant because the marginal disutility of labour is falling. When this happens demand in the economy drops and that causes the economy to contract and deflation which lowers the national propensity to spend and this begins a viscious cycle.

((This means firms cutting prices is bad))

Also, taxation in this case won't make people less competitive in the first place because everyone in the industry is effected so people still compete on price, but the equilibrium price is higher.

Efficiency is not the issue because the objective is to raise operating costs of food producers, not to raise government revenue.

Tax the sugar. Nationalise healthcare.

YES! Finally, someone who will go up against me on economics. You better not be just passing through.

Let's get started.

Quote from SmokinsBad

First of all, profit is proportional to production cost, sales and price per unit, it's not just the product of prices and sales. Sales in this case should (naturally) be as high as possible if you want to make profit, this is increased if you're able to offer high quality with reasonable prices, something that you're absolutely forced to in a competitive branch.

You are incorrect. The point of profit maximisation for any business will almost never coincide with the point of sales maximisation. This is because sales maximisation occurs when prices are as low as possible within the constraints of normal profit, and that happens when the average total cost is equal to the average revenue (price). The point of profit maximisation on the other hand occurs where marginal revenue is equal to marginal costs. Since marginal revenue will always be decreasing as output increases (because price has to fall, except in perfect market conditions which these are not) it will always be less than the average revenue and it must therefore (assuming a profit is actually possible in the industry) equal the marginal cost at a lower output (and higher price) than the point of sales maximisation.

To put it simply: firms tend to make more profit when the price is higher than the total unit cost.

Now if the demand of a product is raised at some point in the economy, producers of this product will have to increase quantities, this would fuel a growth in demand backwards, like a chain, to whatever industry is involved with pleasing the needs of the one before (we have a Swedish word for this, but I just can't figure out the english one =/). And so it has a positive effect on not only retail but also everything interlinked with the actual branch.

Now out of that we can also agree on that if we restrain the industry at some point through taxation, this will make it self apparent on a larger scale, both back and forth in the chain, choking demand, and eventually having negative effect on companies, forcing them to downsize. We will just have to ask ourselves if those are losses worth taking in case "somebody actually knows whats best for me".

We need to be more industry specific at this point. The demand for food on the whole is relatively price inelastic, however the demand for any particular foodstuff may be more elastic because of the wide range of available alternatives. When the price of unhealthy food rises, people will not simply stop eating. Instead, they will shift to other foodstuffs for which the demand will increase. This means that the healthy food suppliers will need to supply more - exactly the same ammount more that was lost from the unhealthy industry. In this way, all the labour ejected from the unhealthy food industry can be absorbed by this new demand for healthy food. It's difficult to see how labour like you find in MacDonalds could be an immobile factor of production, and what little capital is lost would have depreciated in a few years anyway so the long term effect is minimal. Much of it may be transferable anyway.

Then there is also the aspect of freedom, which is highly relevent, but I'm sure people like me been yelling it in your face for years so I'll just... go make some more coffee :)

People in general are morons. They are also selfish. There are extra benefits to making sure people can't get their hands what they want all the time. It's like how second hand smoke hurts people.

Anyhow you definately seem to know what you're talking about, I think it's maybe best if I stay out of this one. xD

Don't you dare. I'm enjoying this.