Wendy McElroy says: government has no business in the kitchens of the nation.
I particularly liked this point:
The typical counter-argument is to say that since society pays for our health care, we owe it to society to lead healthy lives. In short, your neighbour has a vested financial interest in what goes into your body. If you won’t take care of it, the government will make you.
This line of reasoning — rather than justifying a Nanny State or a nosy neighbor dictating your personal choices — constitutes a powerful argument against socialized medicine, but it doesn’t do much to say that the government should control what you eat. If socialized medicine had been advertised decades ago as a government mandate to control the minutia of your daily life, then it would probably have never been implemented.
Society does not have any claim over what you do with your own body. If that is what universal, single payer healthcare systems entail, then it's probably an argument in favour of changing the way we deliver healthcare.
This is not itself an argument against single payer healthcare systems. I only mean to suggest that advocates of more regulation should probably not justify this restriction with reference to universal healthcare.
