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John Stark: Live Free or Die! NH Dems & RINO Republicans: We’re all gonna die!
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Every once and a while, you’ll hear somebody say that some particular movement or other to ban something somewhere in America "would never fly here in the Live Free or Die State." I’m almost positive one of the newsreaders on WMUR stated just that earlier this week in commenting on the story of lawmakers in Mississippi putting forth a bill banning obese people from restaurants in that state. And of course, when you learn the details, you can’t help but agree. "It could never happen here!" Check out the language in the Mississippi bill, as provided by a USA Today story:
House Bill No. 282, which was introduced this month, says: Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.
The penalty? Again from USA Today:
The proposal would allow health inspectors to yank the permit from any restaurant that "repeatedly" feeds extremely overweight customers.
"Yeah, but Doug, the wags are right. That wouldn’t fly here in NH!" Really? Are you sure about that? What about when we consider the rise of walk-in medical care centers across America? While it’s not throwing fat people out of restaurants, NH isn’t exactly ready to welcome the latest innovation in personal health into our state without the state regulators’ stamp of approval, either. While you might think that opening a business in the "Live Free or Die" state would be easy, think again…
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Picking up on a story we’ve been following for some time here at GraniteGrok, the New Hampshire Union Leader had an article in Monday’s paper about the spread of walk-in clinics in places like Wal-Mart, CVS, and Walgreens:
MANCHESTER – If you’ve got the flu and need to see a doctor, you’ve got three options, in descending order of preference: you can try to see your family doctor, visit an urgent care department or go to the emergency room..But if a trend gaining steam nationally makes its way to New Hampshire, you could have a fourth option: pop down to your local pharmacy’s medical clinic. Such clinics are opening around the country at a steady clip. Not only are they relatively cheap — good if you’re uninsured — they are convenient too. Although major operators of the clinics say they don’t have plans to open any in New Hampshire, it likely might just be a matter of time before they do.."Ultimately, we plan to have MinuteClinic locations in all of the markets where we have CVS pharmacy locations," said Carolyn Castel, a CVS Caremark Corp. spokesman, in an e-mail.
As I’ve noted in my prior posts on this, I can’t wait! But what does this have to do with the nanny state and the notion of "Live Free and Die"? Some time back, on the subject of marketplace forces at work in the health care industry here in my neck of the woods I wrote
…the local "non profit" health-delivery institution is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly. Through the years, they have worked all the machinations of government regulations to stifle any and all competition that has attempted to make its mark in the area. They have now either driven from business or purchased any effectively competing health-care delivery service that would bring any alternative choices to the area. With no market forces working against the costs, they rise exponentially.
In Monday’s Union Leader piece, it alludes to those very regulations and their enforcers that will stand between consumers and more choices in basic medical care:
Since the firms behind the clinics have no immediate plans to enter the New Hampshire market, health regulators in the Granite State are taking a wait-and-see approach..They want to see what services the clinics would offer here and how they would offer them before they’ll offer up an opinion. They don’t want to see any unnecessary duplication of costs or services..Still, from the outset, regulators say they want to make sure people don’t consider the clinics a substitute for a good relationship with a primary-care doctor.."The first thing we promote in any family and for any individual is that they have a medical home," said Mary Ann Cooney, the Department of Health and Human Services’ division director for public health.
"Health regulators?" In New Hampshire? What business is it of anyone in government here in the "Live Free or Die" state as to whether there is "unnecessary duplication of services" in a free market?
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If they can tell CVS or Wal-Mart what they can or can’t offer its customers in its stores here in the Granite State, then how much of a stretch is it to imagine "health regulators" ordering restaurants NOT to serve the fatties?
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