16 reasons Gareth Morgan sucks...

...and why all neo-liberal economists should be kept well away from our health system (I know it's too late).

In yesterday's Dominion Post Gareth Morgan explained how the government could use rational incentives to lower the cost of a public health service. For example, he suggested that anyone whose Body Mass Index was below a certain level should get a tax break. Here are some of the, many reasons that's a bad idea:

1. It's racist, Maori and Pacific Islanders tend to have a higher BMI.
2. Poor people also tend to have a higher BMI.
3. It's basically offering a tax cut to the rich and white.
4. Although it's 'common knowledge' that overweight people have more health problems, the scientific evidence for this knowledge is pretty thin on the ground, and even where there may be correlation that doesn't prove causation. If he doesn't pay the slightest bit of interest to the scientific evidence for his claims then we really shouldn't pay any attention to his proposals
5. He's basically arguing that there isn't enough incentive for people to live a lifestyle that lessens the risk of ill-health, because when they get sick they don't face huge medical costs - I would think not being in pain would be a good beginning incentive.
6. He implies that what we really need is a more privatised health system, but that governments are too cowardly to do it - because a privatised health system works so well in the United States.
7. He calls his approach the carrot rather than the stick, but it is still based on paying more tax if you're over a certain weight, which sounds pretty stick like to me.
8. There is no evidence that bodyfat is an independant risk factor for ill-health (independent of activity, diet, poverty etc.). If you were actually going to address so-called 'lifestyle' issues you could start by asking what would increase activity and nutritious food.
9. I don't think it's tax, although if they wanted to take the GST off food that'd be a start.
10. If the government wanted to ensure that people were more active more there are a number of things they could do: provide free exercise facilities, offer free public transport, and most importantly legislate for a shorter working week (I actually like the tone of the Push Play campaign, but it doesn't address any of the structural reasons people don't exercise, starting with the fact that exercise has become a commodity).
11. If the government wanted to ensure that people ate nutritious food then they could start by eliminating poverty - actually that'd probably be enough.
12. Having a low BMI is as strongly linked to health problems as having a high one (ie not very), should we tax those with a lower BMI as well?
13. In the last paragraph he makes his aim clear - the introduction of user pays throughout the health system. Which is fine for him, because he's a user who could pay.
14. "All adults at least are either taxpayers or benefit recipients" - you pay tax on your benefit - all beneficiaries are tax-payers.
15. He wants people to take 'responsibility' for their health, as if these are individual choices made completely separately from the social context we live in.
16. For example poverty is quite a big indicator of an increase in health problems (although whether that means higher health costs depends on whether poor people have equal access to our health system), does he really believe it is poor people's responsibility that they are poor?

Like Howard Morrison's comments about Rosita Vai, Gareth Morgan's fat tax shows that the current anti-fat hysteria is actually just another way of attacking the poor and brown.