[17] - News from Absurdistan - Tyranny by Popular Request

I believe, an employer should be allowed to make any demands whatsoever on a prospective employee, like having to recite a chapter from Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") during lunch break. And the prospect ought to have the right to turn the proposal down or accept it. Make no mistake, the employer may have rather cogent motives to ask for such like and the employee may comply on the strength of equally weighty considerations, as German history will tell you.

What worries me regarding the below dispatch, is the percolation of tyrannical conditions created by the government into the sense of justice that individuals derive from living in a sanctuary delineated by absurd choices.

Government forces people to seek medical relief in ways it seems fit, thereby inflating health costs and twisting "options" preposterously. Government usurps and manipulates the institutions that define health and illness. Government - the ultimate fatso - sets the trend in any number of ways, always relying on a monopolistic (over)weight not remotely approached by any other structure in society. It squeezes, moulds and brainwashes its subjects, who then...well, read the below:

(I do not subscribe to a conspiratorial view of government; its eventual products are as unpredictable as a free society's results, but its mode of operation can be clearly assessed as bringing forth - of necessity - fruits that no one intended nor prefers to arrangements crowded out by the Leviathan.)


Source: LA Times

Looking for new ways to trim the fat and boost workers' health, some employers are starting to make overweight employees pay if they don't slim down.

Others, citing growing medical costs tied to obesity, are offering fit workers lucrative incentives that shave thousands of dollars a year off healthcare premiums.

In one of the boldest moves yet, an Indiana-based hospital chain last month said it decided on the stick rather than the carrot. Starting in 2009, Clarian Health Partners will charge employees as much as $30 every two weeks unless they meet weight, cholesterol and blood-pressure guidelines that the company deems healthy.

"At first, I was mad when I thought I would be charged $30 for being overweight," said Courtney Jackson, 28, a customer service representative at Clarian. "But when I found out it was going to be broken into segments — like just $10 for being overweight — it sounded better."

Jackson said she was going to try to slim down before the plan took effect. "If I still have weight to lose when it starts," she said, "I'll deserve to pay the $10."


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obese29jul29,0,64...