Medicare for the Obese

OK, check this out:

so let me see if i have this straight: we pay our tax dollars to the government so that they can use them to ban supplements that make people healthier and stronger, while at the same time paying the health care costs of the obese???
i can feel myself starting to get riled. and this irritability is not being caused by prohormone supplements!!

I see the point - get fat people slimmer sooner so that future obesity health costs get prevented - but I think it’s a shame to classify a lack of self-discipline and self-restraint as a ‘disease’. That implies it’s not your fault if you are fat.

Just a continuing demise of personal responsibility. No one has to blame themselves for anything nowadays.

Society will officially underwrite any activity anyone wants to engage in. Want to eat crap and balloon up to 500 pounds? We’ll pay for it. Want to get addicted to heroin? We’ll pay for it.

Insurance was once created to help pay for unforeseen future calamities. Now, it is just a open-ended slush fund for lazy and irresponsible people.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Insurance was once created to help pay for unforeseen future calamities. Now, it is just a open-ended slush fund for lazy and irresponsible people.
[/quote]

Which is precisely the reason I refuse to have insurance.

It’s not the smoker’s fault he has lung cancer. It’s not the heroin addict’s fault he has aids. It’s not the lard ass’s fault he can’t push himself away from his Big Mac.

At the risk of sounding elitist - our gene pool is way too crowded with these ‘poor me’ victims.

My wife has a condition which causes (among other things) rapid lactic acidosis. There is literally no way for her to exercise effectively, because any training is overtraining. Since diet alone is insufficient to effect large-scale changes in your body, she’s just plain stuck.

Hormonal therapy could improve her profile enough that she would, eventually, be able to use the normal diet-and-exercise mechanism to lose weight. Unfortunately, our insurance doesn’t cover that, because they don’t recognise “fat” as a medical condition. They’re willing to cover treatment that prevents her fevers and exhaustion and chronic joint pain, but they don’t consider the extra hundred and fifty pounds she’s packing to be a serious symptom.

If obesity is officially a disease, that may actually change. So forgive me if I don’t really care whether the fat lazy pigs of the world get a new excuse; I’ll quite happily let them whine about their victimhood, if it means my wife might actually be able to look in the mirror without feeling like shit some day.

Call me selfish.

While in some cases I can see this being a problem, the vast majority though its a lack of discipline and will power. I swear as a country, if not a race, we are devolving.

I’m eagerly waiting on the backlash from someone collecting disability off being obese.

In extreme cases, save for a few, I still believe its just a patterned development of poor habits.

At first glance I’m pretty strongly opposed to it, for all the same reasons others have pointed out.

But maybe it does make financial sense to go ahead and treat obesity as a disease. You’re going to pay more down the road to treat the obesity-related problems like diabetes and heart disease, so maybe paying the 20 grand or so for a stomach staple saves bigger bucks a few years from now. Plus maybe if obesity itself is labeled as a disease they can start doing more prevention.

CDarklock - sorry to hear about your wife’s condition, hope things work out for her.

i am classified as obese. but yet I can run faster, jump higher, swim smoother, and do better physically than some people I know who are healthy according to the quack-system. Even my vitals are not supported by “Research”. I was told that maybe the instruments the nurse was using on me were faulty because my bp shouldn’t be a mild 104/68, and my HR shouldn’t be 58-60 bpm when I come out of a stress test. Nor should my breathing rate be so relaxed and easy. Discriminating against fat fockers like me! lol…messes up the doctors when they check my vitals all the time. I guess a 250# guy standing 5’10" not supposed to have healthy vitals. I think they are gonna inject me on my next visit with some plaque to clog my arteries, just so they can prove a point. rofl

… but I think it’s a shame to classify a lack of self-discipline and self-restraint as a ‘disease’. That implies it’s not your fault if you are fat.

Thunder, while I do tend to agree, I also know that the ignorance is at fault somewhat for promoting the lifestyle that these people live.

It’s easy to say they should know better, but the government and official bodies (e.g FDA) are producing misinformation, misguided food choices and combatting the availability of supplements.

I’m not sure whether it is reasonable to assume that people generally know where to find sources of information that are informative, authoritative and correct. In this environment, and with a clueless bureaucracy, it must look like some mystery epidemic that is raging across the continent. Idiocy. Nay, lunacy!

A lot of people work very hard at staying fit, and still fail, because of lack of knowledge… education where art though?

for a lighter look at this, check out:
http://www.theonion.com/news/
index.php?issue=4028&n=1

A bit more subtle actually than the usual onion fare, and very funny.

Serious question for CDarklock, with no offense intended: I realize that medical conditions exist which can make it difficult to stay “in shape”. but not everyone has to be ripped up at 6% bodyfat. You say your wife’s condition prevents her from exercising effectively, but I hope she is not bedridden or anything. I mean, a lot of people don’t work out, but just daily activity and a controlled diet keep them at a reasonable level. 150 pounds seems like a lot, but again, I don’t know the specifics of the condition.

To give a less serious example, my sister-in-law is now clinically obese, and it began with her pregnancy. Now, a woman should put on some weight during pregnancy, but 80 pounds? That’s just an abandonment of self-control using the excuse of the pregnancy. Now she talks about how she doesnt feel good about herself.

[quote]CDarklock wrote:
My wife has a condition which causes (among other things) rapid lactic acidosis. There is literally no way for her to exercise effectively, because any training is overtraining. Since diet alone is insufficient to effect large-scale changes in your body, she’s just plain stuck. [/quote]

I disagree that “diet alone” is insufficient to effect large-scale changes. I think half of being a T-mag’er is incorporating proper diet and nutrition into a daily part of your lifestyle.

Don’t agree? Don’t eat anything for the next month, then come back and tell me the scale hasn’t moved at all.

JD

Vroom,

“It’s easy to say they should know better, but the government and official bodies (e.g FDA) are producing misinformation, misguided food choices and combatting the availability of supplements.”

While I agree to some extent that the education is not all that great, I have a difficult time believing that people can claim to be uneducated on diet issues. Assuming you have a television, internet access, or a high-school health class, the basic information one needs to maintain a healthy lifetstyle is readily available.

The Food Pyramid, as an example, is on the threshold of being overhauled, and probably for good reason. But I think it is a stretch to think that the ordinary person doesn’t know that huge portions of junk food and a complete lack of exercise makes you fat and unhealthy.

“I’m not sure whether it is reasonable to assume that people generally know where to find sources of information that are informative, authoritative and correct. In this environment, and with a clueless bureaucracy, it must look like some mystery epidemic that is raging across the continent.”

Again, I just don’t think people are that ignorant. The information is out there. Any doctor’s office or free clinic has reading material on healthy lifestyles.

“A lot of people work very hard at staying fit, and still fail, because of lack of knowledge… education where art though?”

I know quite a few people that work at it moderately, and some that work hard at it for a brief period of time only to abandon the program when results don’t happen fast enough. Very few people I know work hard at consistently and remain unhealthy. Rather than a lack of knowledge, I chalk it up to a lack of an attention span, or a lack of discipline. I suggest that most fat people know exactly what to do to lose weight/get healthy, they just don’t do it.

I agree that the education could be better. But as usual, too many people are waiting for the government to serve up a perfect solution on a silver platter with minimal effort on their own part. Not so - health is a personal responsibility. It requires effort, discipline, doing a little homework, and exercising a little self-restraint.

Thunder, we’re in danger of arguing about agreeing with each other…

Anyhow, I think there is a lot of misinformation and conflicting information. How does the common person get through all that?

Another issue, related to lack of discipline, is the amount of time a double income family has to put into work and the car and feeding of the family zoo. There isn’t a lot of time, energy or money left for some people.

However, yes, very often those wishing they were fit walk out of the supermarket with bags of crackers, cheetos, cookies, tubs of ice cream, cakes, pastries and a ton of other psuedo-food products. All this is consumed while sitting on their voluminous asses watching beautiful people on their TV.

On the other hand, most children grow up on this crap… learning eating habits that obviously haunt them until they suffer an early death in what should be their middle-aged period.