Food Rules author Michael Pollan appeared on the Daily Show last night to plug his book — and to comment on how healthcare “reform” could impact America’s diet.

In the linked clip, Pollan correctly states that once insurance companies are forced to cover everyone, regardless of preexisting conditions, it’s going to be in their interest to prod you toward a healthier lifestyle so they have fewer payouts to make. This could lead to insurers offering price breaks to customers who can demonstrate that they are maintaining a healthy weight, say, or more coercive measures that Pollan hints at — say, insurers pressing the government to tax foods deemed unhealthy.

The one good point that Pollan makes is that we need to quit subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup (a product that, according to Pollan, makes up 20% of Americans’ caloric consumption!). Pollan thinks the government shouldn’t be propping up a food that’s basically empty calories. True — because the government shouldn’t be subsidizing any foods at all.

But Pollan then goes on to ask: What’s wrong with the government encouraging healthier behavior? Why, he asks, do we get up in arms about a soda tax, but don’t bat an eyelash if a doctor says we need to take drugs or undergo uncomfortable medical procedures because of our weight?

Pollan is wrong to think the two are equal. In fact, one is objectionable and the other is not. Government “encouragement” of healthy behavior is a violation of rights, whereas a doctor’s prescription of statin pills or bariatric surgery is merely the consequence of an individual’s own choices. The former is correctly repudiated; the latter, although unpleasant for the individual who experiences it, is the way things should work. The former punishes all Americans because some Americans overeat; the latter is simply the consequences of an individual’s actions visited upon that individual, and no one else.

reasonpharm.blogspot.com