The Government Could Save Your Life By Regulating Your Salt Intake
That’s the conclusion of a (no-doubt taxpayer subsidized) study being put out by a professor at the University of California.
BOSTON (Reuters Life!) – Shaving 3 grams off the daily salt intake of Americans could prevent up to 66,000 strokes, 99,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths in the United States, while saving $24 billion in health costs per year, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The benefit to the U.S. population would be comparable to cutting smoking by 50 percent, significantly lowering obesity rates and giving cholesterol drugs to virtually everyone to prevent heart attacks, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues.
Such a goal, they said, is readily attainable. …
“Even if the federal government were to bear the entire cost of a regulatory program designed to reduce salt consumption, the government would still be expected to realize cost savings for Medicare, saving $6 to $12 in health expenditures for each dollar spent on the regulatory program,” the researchers wrote.
In the past critics of government health care such as myself have said that once we were dependent on the government for our health care, the government would use that as leverage to control how we live our lives. Under the auspices of making us healthier for our own good and saving the taxpayers money.
The problem is that we’re supposed to be living in a free country where we are allowed to live our lives in our own way. I interpret that as meaning that my salt intake is none of the government’s business.
And to the extent that my salt intake impacts my fellow citizens through the increased use of government programs and thus higher government spending and taxation, that’s an argument against such programs which allow my actions and decisions to impact my fellow citizens.
I wonder what our founding fathers, who went to war with the most powerful empire on earth because (among other things) their tea was taxed too much would feel about the republican government they founded now attempting to regulate the food we citizens eat?
