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It's just got even better, Van. This just popped up in the Telegraph- apparently the new motto of the NHS will be "patient, heal thyself".

Anyone you know who thinks nationalised medicine sounds like a good idea, get them to take a look at Britain and see where it ends up.

England is on a national suicide mission almost on par with Israel. Not quite as bad as Israel, but almost.

I think this is the first time I disagree with you Van Helsing. I live in France (but only for 6 more months) and it does make sense to make people more likely to encounter health problems to pay extra for health care. You would not make a crazy driver pay the same for insurance as a normal and prudent driver.

PS: I am against tax funded socialized medicine. It sucks. I've seen it first hand.

So, will the Labor Government be installing two way telescreens in the home of each prole to monitor compliance with that state mandated 30 minutes of calisthenics?

proof the other shoe drops a little harder than the first.

ac101202: While your comment makes sense, keep in mind that even the obese and smoking citizens of Britain pay for the privilege of "free" healthcare. If Britain doesn't want to treat them, then they should be released from their burden of paying into the system so that they can either afford to pay out of pocket for medical care or find a private insurer that will cover them. Why should they pay into a system that will not be there when they need it?

Yes, it makes sense to lead a healthy lifestyle. But to deny basic care because someone doesn't toe the line when it comes to what some bureaucrat deems healthy? No sir, I don't like it.

Couple of extra comments- firstly, smokers (as an example) are massively taxed. They pay about £9bn into the treasury, and even the worst case figure of costs from smoking to the NHS is about £2bn. So they are already paying far more for "insurance premiums" than non-smokers and providing a net financial benefit. Putting that into perspective, the extra taxes smokers pay would buy more than two Nimitz class aircraft carriers every year.

On obesity, or "being a bit chubby" as we called it in kinder times, there's little evidence that it is caused by lifestyle or that it can be successfully "treated"; neither that overweight people are more sickly, except in the small number of very extreme cases. Indeed the evidence is that moderately overweight older people are healthier than skinny ones.

The obesity panic is a moral crusade, driven by a mixture of financial interests, empire building campaigners, and secular pietism. It's just the old sin of "gluttony" clad in threadbare scientific clothing. I'm lucky never to have been prone to overweight, but like everyone I've known many people who are, and watched them despairingly try diet after diet to little or no lasting effect. I've also known those skinny types who consume vast quantities of "bad foods" and beer, and never put on a pound. Body weight does seem to be largely genetic. It seems there are two basic body plans extant in the human population; one which is fat and one which is thin, and ne're the twain shall meet. The fat type gets fatter as it gets older, the thin one doesn't.

Just as an aside, there are other factors which don't get taken into consideration when people quote the "we're all getting heavier" statistics (which are, when one looks at them, quite modest values of a few pounds per person). Firstly, it's clear that different human populations have different body plans. Equatorial africans tend to be tall and slender (low BMI) for instance; whereas west africans tend to be rather rounder (higher BMI). Inuit and polynesians tend towards a tubby shape. As such, population changes will alter the average BMI of a country; Britain has a much higher proportion of west african derived citizens than it had a few decades ago. Is that raising our average BMI?

Also as noted, older people tend to be fatter than they were when they were young (the old middle aged spread which is hardly a new phenomenon). Our population now contains more older people as healthcare helps people to live longer. That would lead us to expect the average weight to rise over time too.

Finally, that aging population will also be more prone to diseases of aging such as diabetes and various cancers, the rise of which are moderate but treated with great panic as proof that we're all getting iller. We're getting older. Many people who, a century ago would have died relatively young now live into old age, plagued by illnesses as their bodies gradually fail**. Ironically, the rising demands on healthcare are, at least partially, a consequence of its success.

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**Sorry to mention my recently departed mum again, but as an example here she had 4 distinct cancers and it was the last one that got her. The first was in 1994; colon cancer. Just a few decades previously she'd have died from that, but improved medical science meant she lived on to suffer cancers of the breast, colon and finally lung. That's four cancers on the statistics instead of one.