I think most of the problems with our country is in someones expectations of what they “deserve”. They think it is OK to buy a NEW car less then every 5 years. The people in the lines at soap kitchens have to own cell phones and have a cable connection in their government provided housing.

If we can teach our population that maybe supersizing that meal is NOT a good thing, and if they only spend money that they have we would end up with a slightly healthy society physically and mentally. But, what does it matter…everyone just wants more and is never satisfied with what they have or can reasonably obtain.

Nik (I might have slightly gone off the healthcare topic, but the whole poor people are fat and cannot help it thing makes me a little mad)

As far as obesity inside the United States goes, I think it goes to show how irrational some people are . What I find interesting is that the second most obese nation after the U.S. is Mexico, which is a fairly poor country. Also, places such as South Korea and Japan, both relatively developed nations, have very low obesity rates. Within the United States, there does indeed seem to be a negative relationship between GDP per capita and obesity rates (I found R2 = 0.3383).

I haven’t read that book, but it sounds interesting. It’s tempting to say that just because people do stupid things, they’re not rational. There are a lot of things people do (smoking, playing the lottery, drinking and driving, even choosing not to buy health insurance) that involve making predictions about the future based on probabilities and statistics. People have been shown to underestimate the likelihood that bad things will happen to them and overestimate the likelihood that good things will happen. So yes, it’s more complicated than just assuming everyone is perfectly rational. We incorporate more complicated analysis in higher-level models. But just because people behave irrationally sometimes doesn’t mean we through out the whole model. It’s a good first approximation about behavior. In introductory physics classes, they often assume that something is falling in a vacuum — despite the fact that our atmosphere is not a vacuum. For some things, the fact that the assumption is not reflect reality 100% only means the predictions are off by a miniscule amount. As I said, I haven’t read the book. But my question if I read it would be: if assuming rationality is wrong, then what formal assumptions would you make that make your predictions better? (You can pick apart someone else’s model, but unless you put forth another model that is better at predicting behavior, you aren’t advancing the conversation.)

(On a side note, there are dueling schools in economics about what makes a model good. Some thing it’s realism of assumptions, others think it’s a model’s predictive power. You can assume all people are purple but if it doesn’t make a difference in regards to whether they’ll buy a new car when you give them $4,500, the fact that the assumption is unrealistic doesn’t really matter.)

There’s evidence to support what you say about poor lifestyle choices by the poor. But you don’t need a gym membership to get off your butt and go for a walk or a run. We are the wealthiest country in the world and have the highest obesity rates of any country (I think — if I’m wrong, I apologize). Yet at the same time, some of the poorer states have the highest obesity rates: Mississippi, Louisiana, etc. It’s definitely a complicated issue. But to say that there is no choice is, I believe, letting people off the hook. Shop in the grains aisle of the grocery store and you’ll find that some of the healthiest foods you can buy (beans, lentils, rice) have the lowest price per calorie in the supermarket. Nobody is “forcing” people to eat McDonald’s, whose sales have risen in this recession.

As far as health care goes, I think it’s sort of unfair to say everyone who lives an unhealthy lifestyle chooses to do so. For the poor, for example, it’s very difficult for them to live healthy lifestyles. They are forced to eat the more unhealthy foods, as healthier foods tend to be more expensive. They might not be able to afford a gym membership, they may not have the time to exercise, and so on. It’s hard to call those choices. So it seems to me that paying for ones behavior only makes sense if its through choice.

That’s one definite problem with the system we currently have (putting US firms at a competitive disadvantage) and one positive effect of universal health care even for a free-market lover like myself. One issue though is the transition. A lot of unions have taken wage concessions in exchange for promises of very beneficial health care packages. If now everybody gets the same level of care, they’ll be one of the losers.

The ironic thing is that the reason we have the system we have today, which puts employers at a disadvantage globally and causes problems for people who lose their jobs, is because of wage controls started by the government decades ago.

I’m not sure if a single-payer system is necessary, but I’m definitely in favor of separating health insurance from employment.

I would also add that we have more people here in this country illegally than the entire population of Sweden, the most populous Scandinavian country. It might be easy for them to administer their system — a little harder to do it in a country with 30 times the population.