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Drinking and smoking, more than covered by taxation. Less than 20% of the population smoke, and its falling. Drinking is on the up, and the morbidities associated are too, but that pales into insignificance when you look at increased lifespan, and increased chronic disease.
If you work with the data (which I do) and you look at trends for cost and burden - it gets quite clear.
Take type II diabetes for example - incidence creeping upto 6.5%, 20 years ago it was round 4%. Type II is for most caused by lifestyle. BUt its not the end of it - its part of a syndrome that often coincides with hypertension, obesity. Obesity will eventually cause both hypertnesion and diabetes. Then it causes musculoskeletal problems, increases the risk of many cancers and increases the risk of depression. Also increase the risk of kidney disease, stroke and heart attack. Every one of these is hugely expensive in terms of system resource and funding
2015/16 stats from NHS England:
The highest prevalence rates are for Hypertension (13.8 per cent), Obesity (9.5 per cent) and Depression (8.3 per cent).
Those numbers are pretty staggering really. 8 million people in England alone with high blood pressure! 4 million obese - that's not just fat, that's seriously fat, as in proper biffer fat.
Chronic long term disease (hypertension, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, respiratory disease) is a big big burden on the NHS. Whilst there are parts of this that is inevitable (as we live longer) a lot of it is within the control of the individual.
The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes...
They will cost billions to implement. They will turn us into even more of a Big Brother state than we are already. Criminals would find a way to forge them anyway. Gordon Brown lost that debate years ago.
Also based on the logic in your example, I won't bother locking my car or house up because the burglars will find a way in anyway. FFS
The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes...
Personally, I'd be quite happy to have an ID card, and I'm surprised they weren't introduced years ago. They're no different from passports of driving licences when it comes to forgery, the crims can forge all manner of paperwork these days. As for the Big Brother state, well that's already here in the form of the information companies and other organisations hold on you, including the government and its agencies, so to me that argument simply doesn't stack up any more.
I certainly wasn't suggesting that people would be turned away from emergency treatment, though. Even in the States, they cannot legally refuse you treatment whether you're able to pay, or not. The only difference is, they get you to the point where you're patched up and able to leave the hospital.
Then 15 years down the line, they will still be using the same technology that is now way out of date, and there will a massive problem like when the NHS was hit with the thing a couple of months ago.
There will also be a massive campaign of civil disobedience with people refusing to use them.
Even if you think they are a good idea in principle, the practical problems and costs would make them a bad idea in practice.
As for the turning away thing it's a grey area on many hospitals definition of "life threatening" or "emergency", I've seen people turned away with fractures that need treating but aren't immediately life threatening, and also seen treatment delays that could have been detrimental to the outcome of the patient due to insurance issues. These issues would need be ironed out if it was ever implemented in the UK. There was also the long standing issue of patient dumping in the US too, this is why we need to follow a model from other EU countries of a not for profit insurance system also.
The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes...
The majority of Britons already hold a passport, so the details are already stored, and a good proportion have driving licences. But what's wrong with showing a passport as a means of identity?
The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes...
So many things need to be altered to help with the process, and not that I want to victim blame as some folk genuinely are naive to these things, but people need to be helped into changing their lifestyle (not a one size fits all shaming process, although this would help some), or if we're going to carry on as we are then they need to start taxing bad food like they tax fags and booze to help pay for it. People are sheep and are easily led, with a lot believing it's not their fault, and whilst I wholeheartedly agree that it's not 100% their fault they need to start helping themselves and some need a push to do it.
The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes...
If your proposal is that we should apply similar taxes on unhealthy foods to those on smoking and drinking, then I heartily agree with you, and in fact feel that would be a great solution! Apart from anything else, fat people who squeeze through their doctor's doors to get a prescription for salads can do it knowing they have contributed to their treatment already, its a win for everyone.
I never debated that an unhealthy lifestyle isnt an issue, but it is not THE ONLY issue, which is what you said in your first post, you know this as if the three issues you quote add up to 31.6% that means other things add up to 68.4%! The only one directly 100% linked to overeating is Obesity of course.
Depression is down to a f**k tonne of factors, so to throw that stat in there is misleading at best.
In fact I'm not sure which bit of my reply you are arguing with, I agreed on the first line of my post "yes its definitely a problem" if I change this to "its definitely a big problem" - are we cool?
but if you are looking at what is loading the NHS most, its not bad driving, drinking, or even smoking really. Course they are part of it, but general poor health due to bad lifestyle is probably more of an impact than anything, particularly for the future