Japan imposes waistline limits to trim healthcare costs

An inevitable conclusion of tax-supported health care is that the government will enforce lifestyle choices on its citizens. Once it realizes that people who choose to live unhealthily tend to require more care than those who do not, they must impose restrictions to force a healthier populace that will cut down on avoidable costs.

The United States, which does not yet have tax-supported health care, is not yet ready to accept government intervention in its eating habits. When the Mississippi legislature introduced HB 282, which would basically have made it illegal for restaurants to serve the obese, it died in committee and never was taken seriously enough to receive a vote.

In Japan, however, things are much different. A traditionally and emphatically not obese nation is concerned about the rising health care costs of its tax-supported system, especially concerning a growing generation more excited about McDonald's and Starbuck's than the traditions of the ancestors.

The blogosphere is currently resonating in reaction to the revelation that, beginning in April, Japan has enacted stringent waistline restrictions (33.5 inches for men and 35.4 for women), requiring all citizens within certain demographics to be measured annually, with dietary help or increasingly stiff penalties for businesses and individuals who cannot get, shall we say, up to shape.

But something is being lost amidst the ridiculous inefficiency of such a one-dimensional guideline and the jokes about pregnant women and the sumo industry. What is just as frightening as the fact that the Japanese have so willingly surrendered the right to choose their own waist size is the fact that so many Americans seem just as ready to surrender theirs. A selection of comments across blogs and articles reveals such attitudes as:

"I actually don’t think it’s a bad idea… some people need limits or they will eat themselves to early death."

"I think its great that Japans government cares enough about its citizens' to take this sort of action."

"I agree wholeheartedly! Enough is enough!"

"I think we need to set waistline limits in this country... I think it it is a great, it's time to stop coddling fat people and time to start helping them."

Predictably, pathetically, these people are swallowing Big Brother's pill: The government knows what's best for you. It's for your own good.

I suspect none of these consenting folks are the obese ones. Humans have a remarkably selfish tendency to not care about the principle of losing their libertarian rights until the loss of a right affects them personally (Thus America's collective yawn over the recent see-sawing of their right to habeas corpus, something most of them probably can't even pronounce, much less understand the significance of.)

But sooner or later a government-funded health care system is sure to realize that smokers put as much of a drain on the system as the fat folks once did. And, of course, preventing people from smoking will make them healthier, too - it's for their own good. Forbidding cigarettes might dampen the enthusiastic surrender of the skinny more than forbidding obesity does now.

I won't continue peering down the slippery slope of the negative health effects of alcohol... carbonated beverages... skimping on seven servings of vegetables and thirty minutes of daily exercise... I don't seriously fear that 33.5 inches of waistline today means government-mandated dietary scheduling and monitoring tomorrow; it's hard to predict how much health government is willing to enforce, and how much health citizens are willing to have enforced.

But once governments start drawing those kinds of lines, they seem to have trouble stopping. Tax-supported health care is a caring hand that easily turns into an iron fist; once government expands to provide everyone health care, it discovers that to truly do so it must expand even more in an increasingly dangerous and bloated form. Perhaps we should reconsider how much we enjoy our freedom to deviate from someone else's definition of a perfect lifestyle before we agree to fund the health of everyone.