The Chicago Tribune reports that a Massachusetts state legislator wants to ban schools from serving a regional favorite - sandwiches made of peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff - more than once a week. He believes that's necessary for the health of children. I say serve P.B. and Fluff sandwiches in school cafeterias every day, along with a range of other choices, and let the kids decide. It's not as if when they're home or elsewhere, and out of parental surveillance range, they can't indiscriminately snarf snacks, sweets and junk food. There's nothing like a bellyful of Cheetos and Pepsi, a meal from McDonald's, or a daily diet of Marshmallow Fluff sandwiches to teach a kid about healthy, good eating.

The central idea here is that unlike the socialist nutbars running the asylum in Sam Francisco, we should understand that we're all largely responsible for our own health, personal development, economic security and well-being. In a transcription of a 2004 speech that was just published on the Internet in the June 2006 issue of the libertarian journal Liberty, Whole Foods Founder John Mackey asserts we - not government in any manner - should take responsibility for our own health.

Mackey argues:

....health is not merely the absence of disease. It is vitality and a sense of well-being. Health is partly about eating a healthy diet. Regular daily exercise and minimizing the poisons we take into our bodies, such as sugar, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, are also very important. Health is about getting adequate sleep, and also about having a sense of personal life purpose and maintaining an optimistic and positive attitude. Most importantly, our health and well-being are our own responsibilities. Our doctors cannot assume these responsibilities. Nor can the bureaucratic "experts" controlling a health care system.

The freedom movement must first advocate the ideal of self-responsibility for health. We own our own bodies, don't we? This is no minor thing, because the Left, by supporting socialized medicine, demonstrates a belief that common citizens are too stupid to take responsibility for our own health and therefore need the "experts" to step in and control things for our own good.

Next, we must advocate the ideal of free markets and competition in health care. The monopoly that medical doctors largely have in medical treatment must be broken. They should have to compete fully with other practitioners, such as chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopaths — and yes....even homeopaths...Doctors don't compete on quality or price right now. They don't post their prices, and it is almost impossible to get any real idea of the quality of their services except through trial and error.

...Eliminating tax incentives for health care would change everything. Most companies (like Whole Foods) would stop offering free or subsidized health insurance if the benefit wasn't tax-deductible. Individuals would no longer receive "free" health care and would start spending their own money. The power of the markets would increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of our health care system enormously....Let markets truly work in health care and I have little doubt that the health of Americans would improve immensely.

He's right of course, but at present our society is reluctant to let everyone take responsibility for their own health care, as much sense as it makes. We are too busy looking for "racial disparities" in seatbelt usage, and theorizing about "social justice" denied every time equal outcomes fail to materialize among different groups in health, educational acheivement, income and even rates of business ownership. In the meantime, parents are wise to enforce and model to their children healthy diet and exercise habits, right from the start. Or under the current paradigm, we all pay - through higher costs distributed among companies and employees funding private health care plans, and among the taxpayers funding public health care.

TECHNORATI TAGS: HEALTH CARE, DEREGULATION, JOHN MACKEY, WHOLE FOODS, LIBERTARIAN, MARSHAMELLOW FLUFF, MASSACHUSETTS, HEALTH DISPARITIES, SEAT BELT USAGE, OBESITY, SOCIAL JUSTICE, INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY