You’re right, david f
Be careful crossing streets,
don’t eat meats,
cut out sweets,
you’ll get a pain in a room in your rum tum.
As for ‘smart cards’...like Yuyutsu I avoid leaving an electronic footprint that would betray my purchasing secrets...no one’s spying on OLO are they?
NathanJ, the reward for eating well is health and well-being, that’s the pay-off. However, I reckon there is a case for charging higher medicare and other health insurance premiums for smokers and heavy alcohol users

In response to Right Is Right,

What you have raised in relevant - but it could include:

1. Swiping your card at a supermarket - and any fresh fruit/vegetable items and associated points go onto the card.

2. Registered fruit and vegetable shops could have the swipe card system - but not all have scanning systems - so registration would be vital to ensure the system is not abused.

3. Fresh health cooking classes (with scanners) or details put online to get benefits on your card.

4. If you are at city based food markets, like the Adelaide Central Markets: http://www.adelaidecentralmarket.com.au/ these could have a set scanning system in place, given out to healthy, fruit and vegetable shops only by the management.

My gut feel on this is that if it was introduced the prices of "healthy" products would rise to take advantage of the inflow of taxpayer money. Nathan would probably find after 6 months or so that staying healthy had got a lot more expensive than it was before the government decided it could help.

I'm also wandering how it gets managed, I'm rather fond of dried figs and some other dried fruits. Health food shops often sell them and in moderation they probably are healthy. Not so much if too many are consumed. Would I have a quota on how much of particular items I could buy in a period?

My preference is for government to stay out of peoples way.

If they must interfere then work out what are the things that motivate people and put the money into that. For instance I did a number of obsticle course events last year, lots of taining motivation for those events and plenty of overweight people working hard to shed some kilos and up their fitness enough to take part. Likewise with fun runs and some of the shorter triathalons. I suspect that those sorts of events probably get far more people out exercising and changing diet than money poured into elite sport and big stadiums.

R0bert

That was a strange so called 'reply' from NathanJ to Right Is Right. NathanJ didn't address even one of the concerns raised by Right Is Right. Strange.

Right Is Right, you are right. The administration and policing costs of NathanJ's plan would cost an absolute fortune. And guess what? Australia would need to go into even further debt to pay for it. It's a dumb idea.

Lester1,

Your response on debt is bizarre - it is simply an avoidance of the topic and ignores and that our current health system is unsustainable, and nothing is done to prevent damage to the human body.

Trust me, I've been through this before when one of my parents had a severe heart attack (after years of smoking), had to visit a GP whilst this occurred, had to go a major hospital for treatment via ambulance and then stayed in that hospital (after treatment) as well. All funded by taxpayers.

This is not free. It adds to Australia's debt left to us by the Labor Party - and of course no one else.

Nothing is done to promote healthy eating of food or living - and people simply refer to freedom of choice - simple answer, but no solution.

Nathan,

I agree with your ideas generally.
However, instead of invading privacy and tracking where and what people eat and drink I think all we require is a universal Healthcare web monitor system which logs ALL visists to any health professional, any illnesses and likely causes [self inflicted or not] and also to log ALL medicines bought from chemist.
That way if a person has serious health problems which cost the system money they can be dealt out some restricted access until they grow up. We already publicly scorn drug addicts and acloholocs who often cause their own serious health problems. Why not do same with ANY glutonness self-inflicting cash drain?

Also another thing could be to monitor the number of visits to doctors and number of PBS medicines they get, so that person U who only gos GP once a year and only gets anti-biotiics on PBS occasionally will not be missing out over a person H who may go to all kinds of doctors dozens of times yearly and who may also get over hundred PBS prescriptions. Surely the user of too much should be cut back before someone never using the system?