An (imperfect) army of health nannies

As part of his Utopian health care plan, economist Brad Delong proposes paying for an army of nannies with sin taxes. He writes:

"Sin taxes (and, perhaps, someday general revenues) pay for an army of barefoot doctors and nurses and mobile treatment vans roaming the country, knocking on doors, and providing preventive and other long-run lifestyle services for free: Let me examine your prostate. Mind if I check your refrigerator and tell you how to eat healthier? Have you exercised today? I'm a Pilates instructor, and we could do a session now? Are you up on your immunizations? Anybody here have a fever and need antibiotics? Come on out to the van and I'll clean your teeth." The idea is to make the preventive care cheaper-than-free, to insure that nothing with a high long-run benefit/cost ratio gets left undone because people would rather get a bigger check the next April to use to buy an HDTV."

Politicians, however, have imperfect knowledge of what practices promote good health. If we give politicians the power to hire an army of health nannies, therefore, these nannies will make some mistakes and occasionally push unhealthy practices. For example, had Delong's army been in place in 1990 it would surely have pushed people to use more suntan lotion and get less exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays. But this would have reduced peoples' production of vitamin D and so possibly have greatly increased cancer deaths.

The army would also have advocated against alcoholic consumption, even the the median American probably receives health benefits from drinking.

I also suspect that because of the huge number of overweight Americans, it would be politically impossible for an army of nannies to advocate against obesity in a way that made obese Americans "feel bad." Instead this army might push for "fat acceptance" to boost the self-esteem of fat Americans.

(HT: EconLog)