In the Wall Street Journal today, Allysia Finley offers several examples of cost benefit analyses (CBAs) to support more government force with similar arguments to government-forced contraception coverage to illustrate why such CBAs are absurd.
I recommend reading the whole piece, Coffee is an Essential Benefit Too.
Here’s one CBA:
Fitness club memberships. Most doctors agree that exercising is one of the best ways to prevent disease. However, gym memberships can run between $240 and $1,800 per year. Such high prices force us to choose between exercising and buying groceries. While we could walk or jog outside, many of us prefer not to. Therefore, employers should be required to pay for workers’ gym memberships. Doing so might even reduce employers’ health costs, which is why many companies already subsidize memberships. Those that don’t are limiting our freedom to exercise.
Related articles
- Cost Benefit Analyses Suck (ourdinnertable.wordpress.com)
- Much ado about rubbers? (ourdinnertable.wordpress.com)
Our Dinner Table 
Bravo!
The left would not phrase the gym-grocery dilemma as a choice on the part of the buyer. Instead they portray this as a member of the bourgeoisie denying the proletariat access to the gym (and they’ll probably also claim that the proletariat is being denied access to groceries as well and demand that the proletariat not only receive free food, but that this food include luxury items such as lobster, filet mignon and Dom Perignon).