The Cost of Obesity in America

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | (0) Comments

At least he is trying!

2 health related articles popped up today on MSNBC- One on how Canada requires airlines to provide 2 seats to obese persons at the airlines expense, and the second on how hard health care reform will be when 70% of the US is overweight or obese.

The second article has several really bad logical errors- the worst of which is that providing gastric bypass surgery as a covered procedure will fix our problem. I don’t have any problem with covering the procedure but let’s face it- that only holds if 70% or even 35% of adult Americans are going to get gastric bypass. I guess you could put gastric bypass clinics on the corners next to the MacDonalds, but that is a lot of people. “What are you doing today?” “Oh, I’m going to get an eye exam and new glasses and I think I’ll stop and get a gastric bypass on the way home”.

The real issue, of course, is that people simply will not be responsible about their lifestyle and health. The problem with irresponsibility is that it always costs someone- you, me, or usually, both. The current financial crisis is a pretty good example of the cost of irresponsibility. But I personally think that the current health crisis will exact an even bigger toll because it won’t just be money and jobs, it will be lives.

As for me, my health insurance rates went up by almost 50% since I am now in the high risk, over 50, age group. The fact that I am probably lower risk than most 30 year olds means nothing since even though insurance companies rate people for risk for driving, life insurance and just about everything else, it is not politically correct to expect people to be responsible with their health and lifestyle. “Normal” in America is now fat. Since most of the politicians and insurance industry executives are all fat too, we will just have to struggle along under the weight (pun intended) of this insanity until the system can no longer sustain it. I give it about 5 years, tops.

A lot of people don’t really feel the cost of this since they have company provided health insurance. But the cost is still there- they just lower your salary or wages to pay for it. It really would be beneficial if your company gave you the money as part of your salary and made you buy your own insurance from a pool of approved companies, one of which only insures healthy normal weight people. Then people would have a big financial motivation to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

At any rate, if you think that the answer is a Canadian style national health care system, read the article… there is typically a 6-12 month wait to see a doctor for non-emergency situations.