Anyone living near a Bally Total Fitness or any fitness club, for that matter, has access to a skinfold test. You are very right to say that underwater weighing is pretty inaccessible to the general population, but for the majority of people living in the USA, they can find a fitness club in the area. If you belong to a club, they can do it for you, and if you don't, you can pay a little extra for the test.

Regardless, the more muscle you have (regardless of the amount of fat on your body), the more off the BMI will be. That is pretty much accepted, which is why people with athletic body proportions usually have to go through different standards for stuff like insurance policies.

All those insurance companies (at least, the ones I know of) that use the "get on a scale, now how tall are you) measurements can easily incorporate a skinfold test into their assessments. It is not rocket science to learn how to do a skinfold test. Better yet, if they did the skinfold test, checked weight, and asked for your fitness regime, they would get a BETTER understanding of just how fit you are. Insurance companies don't want to do that, though, because if they did, they know they'd have to include more people into their highest premium group, which costs less for the consumer, and that wouldn't work for their bottom line.

Koffee