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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (13312)	2/25/2006 7:35:08 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541486

Wrong I don't want to incarcerate people, or interfere with their constitutional liberties. I am, however, willing to see that certain unhealthful practices are not subsidized, or encouraged, by forbidding limitations on business, and their ability to reach captive audiences. The difference is in the intrusiveness. Am I willing to go in to a new mother's house and tell her what to keep in her cupboard? No, (her formula is safe from me should she wish to go out and get it); I am no more likely to forbid formula for mothers than I am likely to reach in to the privacy surrounding a pregnant woman's womb and tell her what to do with her unborn future child. It's a difference in modes, and targets- and it's a big difference, and it's a difference that respects the constitution- that's important to me. I suspect it makes a difference to others. Time will tell. There is a balance to be struck between public policy and absolute freedom- some laws strike that balance better than others. I think this restriction on giving out free formula pretty neatly allows people all the freedom they want (barring no mothers from using formula, after all), while keeping hospitals from using their influence to sway new mothers from a course that is probably detrimental to bother mother and child. You are essentially up in arms about the inability of hospitals to shill as advertisers for the formula companies- the competing interest here is the welfare of infants. It's hard to see how the "good" of advertising outweighs the benefits of this public policy to infants and their mothers, and it's hard to see this as the poster child for much of anything. In choosing this course you would give new mothers no protection at all from the hospitals using their aegis to shill formula- even though most hospitals depend substantially on federal funds, and are thus less than purely "private" institutions. This makes a compelling legal difference. If an absolutely private hospital wanted to shill for forumal companies, I'd say that the government should not be able to reach there, but for all other hospitals, I do not see the compelling interest for your point of view.