Grandma's House

Well, I hope all you anti-smokers are proud of yourselves. You've awakened a sleeping giant, and I'm not sure it's gonna be so easy to knock it out again. I bet you thought they'd stop at doing away with smokers, didn't you? Looks like that was just the beginning.

Earlier this year in New York City, a public-heath regulation went into effect that set a new and very troublesome precedent, one that insinuates government agencies into personal medical matters.

In mid-January, the city began legally requiring laboratories that do medical testing to report to the Health Department the results of blood-sugar tests for city residents with diabetes — along with the names, ages, and contact information on those patients.

I hear you asking yourself: Why would they want that information? Well, brace yourself.

City officials are not only analyzing these data to assess patterns and changes in diabetes prevalence in the city, but are planning "interventions." Simply put, diabetics will soon receive letters and phone calls from city officials offering advice and counsel on how to effectively deal with their medical condition.

What will happen if the contacted person doesn't want this so-called "intervention"? Well, here's one scenario:

When the government's phone calls and letters nagging people to eat better, quit smoking, and be more physically active don't work, the next phase of the war on chronic disease may be a harshly punitive one, with fines and other restrictions on those who fail to heed the health warnings. The message will be: Live a healthy life or the government will punish you.

Imagine how much easier it will be to "punish" you if we have government-controlled health care. And then, when they're finished with the diabetics, who will be next? Frankly, I don't like the answers I can come up with in my mind. And you probably won't, either.