The Carbohydrate Conspiracy Revisited

Exclusive commentary by Greg Lewis

Dec 30, 2003

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Much of the response to an earlier article, "The Carbohydrate Conspiracy," focused on how unfair it was of me to implicate liberals (and the left in general) in a so-called conspiracy to promote the consumption of excessive carbohydrates. While not sympathetic to this position, I can nonetheless see how liberals might take umbrage and others might think the accusation unfounded. I will admit that the connection certainly could appear to be somewhat tenuous. New evidence has surfaced, however, to make the case virtually airtight.

Let me backtrack a bit and see if I can put my assertion of a connection between the left and a "carbohydrate conspiracy" on somewhat firmer ground. First, it is, as I understand it, virtually axiomatic among Democrats and socialists that a central government should have broad and far-reaching decision-making powers. Hillary Clinton's attempt to nationalize health insurance under federal authority is a classic example of this impulse. It would have taken health-care decisions out of the hands of the people receiving the health care and those administering it, and put those decisions in the hands of a government bureaucracy.

Even under most current private health care plans, patients and doctors are disenfranchised to a much greater degree than they should be by a process that artificially sets parameters for and administers most important health care decisions, from what treatments will be covered to how much physicians will be reimbursed for those treatments. Such plans amount to nothing more than subsidized medical and drug treatments. Sensible alternatives to current medical insurance plans include individual and family medical savings accounts, which can be funded by employers or individuals. The money available in a medical savings account can be spent by the account holder on any medical treatment he or she requires. Money in these accounts can be invested, much like money in an IRA, and unspent money can be rolled over from year to year. Catastrophic illnesses are covered by supplemental high-deductible insurance plans, the premiums for which are very low.

Such eminently sensible insurance plans have been proposed numerous times by federal legislators, and they have been universally resisted by Democrats, for the primary reason, as near as I can determine, that they take power away from the federal government and put it in the hands of those whose lives are dependent on the healthcare treatments they pay for. It's very much as if Democrats are saying, "We'll be damned if we'll let you make your own mistakes regarding health care. If there are mistakes to be made, we'll make them for you."

And that's precisely the point of the recent evidence implicating a leftist government in damaging, if not disastrous heath care decisions. You've heard the saying, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." That saying is intended to alert you to the fact that, if someone offers you a free lunch, there's always a catch. Would that the Swedes had paid attention to it, because in Sweden there is such a thing as a free lunch.

The Swedish government provides a free lunch to all Swedish schoolchildren. The catch? It has to be, by government decree, a low-fat lunch. That is, a high-carbohydrate lunch. That is, an unhealthy lunch. In addition, the Swedish government goes to the trouble to put a special low-fat symbol on supposedly "healthy" snacks, encouraging parents to choose them for their kids. In the past decade or so, obesity among children in Sweden has tripled. And while the free lunch program and the low-fat snacks are not the only contributors to the rise in obesity, they are certainly significant, considering that the government is by example and by recommendation promoting an unhealthy diet. Low-fat meals and snacks mean, in most cases, high-fat consumers.

The United States — thanks to the fact that we had enough sense to reject la Clinton's socialized health care plan, and despite the fact that incorrect and harmful information about what constitutes a healthy diet continues to be perpetuated by our government and our media — is still a country where citizens have a high degree of control over their diets. It is estimated that as many as one third of all American adults are now following the Atkins diet, by their own choice. It's simple: Atkins works to control weight, blood glucose fluctuations, and cholesterol levels, among many other positive things, and people are realizing it. If you're not on the Atkins diet, you're on the Fatkins diet.

And so, the Carbohydrate Conspiracy is in fact what I would term a "presenting issue" in this case. While it may not be literally true that Democrats and liberals in the United States perpetuate dietary misinformation in the service of keeping people unhealthy, it is true that the impulse toward an increasingly powerful central government leads to situations in which life-and-death decisions are taken out of the hands of people whose lives are at stake and put in the hands of bureaucrats who have no medical expertise and no involvement in the lives of the people receiving treatment. This is perversely unhealthy, and it leads to situations such as that in Sweden, where the government becomes the arbiter of what is healthy, and when it makes a mistake, millions pay for it.

Such decisions are based, in the final analysis, on a denial of individuality. To propose that all people experiencing a given set of symptoms should somehow be given the exact same treatment is not only illogical — given what we now know about human biochemistry — it is absurd, and, some would argue, criminal. In my experience, it is those on the left, including Democrats and socialists, who insist on treating citizens not as individuals, but as members of a class. That is the crux of the problem: Democrats' unwillingness to craft or approve legislation and policy that enable people to exercise personal choice wherever possible in the decisions that affect their lives. And at bottom, that is what the Carbohydrate Conspiracy is really all about.


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Writer Greg Lewis is the co-author of the Warner Books hardcover "End Your Addiction Now." He can be reached by e-mail by clicking here.

Oh, oh, oh!!! I should know better than to read these boards at work, because now I'm all riled up. Medical savings accounts (MSAs) are already in use by several companies in the US. They are a hot trend in Human Resources right now. They're ideal for well-educated, high-income employees who can afford to fund part of their own health care and understand how the US medical system works. They are not ideal for everyone. In fact, for many of the employees at my company an MSA would be a disaster, virtually ensuring they never went to the doctor again. (Mind you I am not trying to say my employees are stupid; this is a complicated issue.)

Yes, our existing health insurance system is a complete failure. The US cannot continue on this same path for much longer; we will have to change. But (1) MSAs for everyone are not the answer and (2) I don't believe for a second that our current situation is the result of a vast Democratic conspiracy. That's BS. We are in the mess we're in because private, for-profit, insurance companies run the show, because Rx costs are out of control, and because our doctors are so afraid of malpractice suits that they routinely order unecessary tests and prescribe unecessary drugs just to cover their own butts.

Big business -- which says Republican to me -- and our own love of litigation have helped put us in this mess. Not well-meaning-if-paternalistic Democrats.

On second thought, gotbeer, maybe I should start every day by reading one of your articles. It might help kick my caffeine addiction.

Rosa, you live in Washington State. NOTHING will break your caffeine addiction.

Too true.

What is truly bizarre about this guy is that his sense of history only seems to go as far back as the Clintons. There were a full 12 years of republicans in the white house before Clinton, not to mention the last 3 years with Bush. How in hell did those darn pesky liberals manage to advance this agenda so well when they've only held the presidency 8 years out of the last 23?

All that being said, I enjoy reading this kind of rant. I envy guys like this who can see the world as such a black-and-white place (with the evil Liberals fighting the bad fight against the herioc Republicans).

Thanks for the laugh,

Rick

Couple of contradicitons here: First,



Then,



You have to be aware, of course, that trial lawyers have done everything they can to prevent any kind of meaningful tort reform, including reform that would lower the absurdly high cost of malpractice suits, and that they are one of the largest contributors to the Democratic party, which has helped kill most efforts to try to cope with the breathtaking cost of litigation and malpractice costs. Not defining the Democrat's shameful role in this situation does a disservice.

I'm thinking that we are currently between two unforgiving forces: insurance companies and trial lawyers. It's odd that instead of being adversarial, these groups seem to have banded together to squeeze the rest of us. It is true that Republicans get more Insurance lobby money, but to omit the fact that Democrats are in the pockets of trial lawyers isn't fair.

Yes, I was aware of the "lawyers blocking tort reform" issue, but completely unaware of the fact that trial lawyers are a huge Democratic party backer. I tend to have specialized information in certain areas (work- and hobby-related), but be largely ignorant of many other things. I am ashamed to admit that unless a general news article is on the MSN home page or posted here, I don't know anything about it.

I'm considering making reading the entire daily paper one of my New Year's resolutions (not that I have the time), but then of course the question is which paper? One of my very well-informed friends touts "alternative" internet news sites (particularly ones from the UK) as the only source of reliable news, but I think that's extreme.

At any rate, I stand corrected. Thank you. (In case you're wondering, I'm not a member of either party. I tend to be "right" on business issues and "left" on social ones; I think it's a contradiction inherent in the field of HR.)

I don't know for sure, but I would be willing to bet that the trial lawyers also contribute to the Republican Party. That's what they all do these days, buy both sides.

I don't have the numbers, Turtle2003, but I'd assume you are right. In very few instances does a lobby push money only to one side. Usually, they tend to favor one party or another, with most accounts saying that the trial lawyers pour more of their resources to Democrats and insurance companies more to Republicans.