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Post by ghannaba on Nov 13, 2016 14:39:52 GMT
The movie paints an interesting perspective of lobbyists having its shot from a first person narrative of the protagonist, Naylor. It takes a favorable stance at the end showing their utility and giftedness in their line of work. Naylor pretentiously and self-absorbedly brags about himself in a way at the beginning to try to make the audience jealous of his abilities. Where he demonstrates a smooth talking and scrappy ability to unwittingly tear his opponents up in the public eye, ultimately, his real sway in places of politics come from money. The issue surrounding tobacco as they point out in the film is a concept of liberty. We know the effects of it and it has been well demonstrated. But at the end of the day it is the individual's decision on whether to take the risk or not. We take risks everyday such as driving or flying, and yet, I don't even think twice about putting the keys into the ignition. The public health issue at hand though regards the liberty each person has to not be impacted by the effects of others' choices, say from second hand smoking. Recent motions to remove smoking from being allowed in public places such as restaurants or buildings I think are proper public health policies as people who choose not to use tobacco ought not to be subjected to the effects from the decisions of those who do choose to use tobacco. That mentality then does put a damper on the argument for making public policies to regulate or restrict certain things such as junk food or sugar sweetened beverages. But as our society becomes more and more interconnected and given our health care model becomes the responsibility of the entire populace (Taxing for Medicare and Medicaid and public payor options), should we consider making policy that does restrict those unhealthy things in people's diet since poor health of many citizens becomes a burden for the entire country? Should the working cohort (who pays the bulk of the taxes) of today be responsible for paying for the care needed for people who knew the impacts and consequences of eating and living unhealthily yesterday? Just a thought that I have heard others bring up and wanted to pose to the forum.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." - Nietzsche
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Post by Summre Blakely on Nov 14, 2016 2:47:36 GMT
Interesting topic.. While it sounds great in theory to start inflicting policies on regulating the unhealthy products available for the general public, it starts a dangerous game. Most everything on the market can be said to be dangerous, usually when used in heavy amounts. We can start with soda and processed foods, but then what's next? Red meat? All dessert products? Sharpies or spray paint? Cleaning products? Candy in general? It becomes such a slippery slope, especially when you start to take into consideration GMO products which some people have problems with and others don't. If you strictly put it into the hands of "science," and only regulate products that research has shown to be damaging to our health, you still have this possibility. Remember when cranberries were thought to cause cancer? Where does one draw the line?
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Post by Megan Mikesell on Nov 14, 2016 20:55:14 GMT
You brought up a great point. The way our healthcare and society works today, we are all impacted by other people's decisions in some way or another, especially financially. Summre does bring up a good argument though. If we start taxing sugar and processed foods, how far will it go? I fear this may harm low-income families. Without healthy options in local stores and nutrition education these foods are what some families rely on for calorie dense cheap options.
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Post by Jeff Dennis on Nov 15, 2016 22:32:06 GMT
Great question. I think particularly in the case of Medicare we are paying huge portions of tax dollars to people who made unhealthy decisions throughout their lives. I think long term it means we have to do much more to educate people about health behaviors, yet as with smoking, there are very few people who actually don't know it is harmful, yet millions continue to smoke. The circumstances that lead people to abuse substances long term are complex and heavily rooted in socioeconomic factors, which health professionals have little control over. As such, one can make the argument that policy may have to more aggressively curb those behaviors for the economic well being of the society.
As much as we cling to the idea of independence and free will, our system is set up to the point that we are heavily intertwined and there is little to no way to opt out.
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Post by Lex Hurley on Nov 19, 2016 17:46:35 GMT
That's a very interesting takeaway from the movie. One of the contributing reasons for the recent hikes in health insurance costs from the ACA is that only the people who really needed health insurance for treatment were signing up for the service and very few healthy individuals were signing up and contributing to the insurance pool so that there would be money to use for expenses. I personally think that if we ever manage to truly implement a nationwide public insurance it would be a good idea to even out the risk pools for public insurance markets by possibly introducing higher insurance fees for risk factors such as smoking, lack of physical activity, or diet-related factors. This would in theory act as another financial incentive to dissuade people from unhealthy behaviors and also supplement the pool of insurance funds available to those who need them for other, non-preventable medical expenses. Of course, this would only work with mandated nationwide insurance across the United States, which won't happen anytime soon..
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Post by ghannaba on Nov 23, 2016 17:47:15 GMT
The taxing of products really isn't the best approach I will admit Summer, but Lex really hits more at what would be the incentivizing/penalizing move. However, on hitting the person later in life, we miss the opportunity to avoid the behaviour altogether. The point of incentives and penalties or policy programs is to promote/change behaviours to ones that can avoid harmful consequences. People ultimately do get the decision to use tobacco or not or sugar, but when the use reaches a disordered behaviour pattern, the use no longer becomes a choice and passes into the realm of disease (i.e. overeating behaviour disorder or tobacco use disorder or [insert substance or behaviour] disorder). At that point, my thinking puts on the MD hat and says at that point, the person has lost the choice in the behaviour and is now driven by compulsion or impulsivity and needs medical help in order to get the behaviour disorder into remission. My citizen hat now says that our goal as a society that is interconnected should provide education, incentives, and model tools to help intervene on the potential development of these behaviours before they become disorders. The heart of disorder behaviour from my experience arises often from the pretense of being a coping mechanism. Teaching healthy coping behaviours and mental health management by empowering people to live lives healthy and that can handle the stress ultimately could match that coping mechanism need. Easier said than done and certainly takes the community to be on board and be willing participants. That is my experience- I primarily was posing those issues as I hear people tossing around such taxation, and I wrote a policy brief for Gittner's class for fun (and for a grade) proposing a draconian-style sugar sweetened beverage tax.
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Post by Leslee Castro on Dec 8, 2016 4:38:44 GMT
Hi Greg! You address some interesting points from the movie, and I think that you are right that this leads people to suggest warning labels on unhealthy foods and beverages. As you mentioned, liberty is something that was emphasized in the movie, and that was my big takeaway from watching the movie. It truly does not matter how often you warn people, people are still going to make their own choices. People do not always make good nor healthy choices, and they often act merely out of habit. This makes it difficult to reach these people due to their resistance to change. Profit is a major part of why some unhealthy behaviors still occur in populations, which is disheartening. However, at the root of that is personal choice. They can try to turn the point around to say that there is a positive aspect and a negative aspect to take into consideration regarding any personal health choice, but the person will make the choice.
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