Try getting life insurance if you sky dive. Or health insurance if you have a pre-exsisting condition. It is already happening.

The blood pressure part I do not agree with, because that is often not the product of lifestyle.

In other news... People with healthy lifestyles will get a discount on health care. :p :D

My thought is that the care of diseases which are very strongly associated with obesity are becoming too commonplace (heart disease and diabetes are afew examples). Sure a shattered collarbone ain't cheap to fix but i'm guessing it's pretty uncommon compared to the number of cases of heart disease?

This sounds goofy to me. Often current smokers go years with seemingly no ill effects, but once you've smoked for 10 years, the damage has been done and the body suffers adverse affects for years after. Not just cancer which is the first thing folks think of but in other body systems, for example the cardiovascular system. [LINK]

" * Smoking causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.1 Cigarette smokers are 2–4 times more likely to develop coronary heart disease than nonsmokers.6
* Cigarette smoking approximately doubles a person’s risk for stroke.7,8
* Cigarette smoking causes reduced circulation by narrowing the blood vessels (arteries). Smokers are more than 10 times as likely as nonsmokers to develop peripheral vascular disease.9
* Smoking causes abdominal aortic aneurysm.1 "

Often, patients with multiple complications during a hospitalization will have a history of smoking. You can almost bank on it when taking care of a real sick patient ... did they smoke? .... yup.

It's already happening .. in a way.

Companies (at least mine does) will give you a reimbursement on your health club/gym membership for either maintaining a weight or reaching a goal, which includes weight loss, cholesterol level or smoking cessation.

For insurance premiums, it may just end up that in-shape people get discounts rather than obese people pay more.

But stranger things have happened when your country is run by lobbyists.

This whole issue just hits a nerve. The poor=fat thing is a canard. There was a study that came out today that said 98% of poor people have color TVs. There are some in North America that are truely poor but you should see the SUVs pull up to the food bank where my wife volunteers. Go to a concert or the mall and see all the fat people. The poor can shop at the mall? Alot of Americans are just overweight.

$10 per person is barely enough to offset the $90 billion per year cost of obesity.

Some providers will give you $20 per month if you use the gym at least eight times a month.

It is price discrimination which is perfectly legal and seen in many other industries. Health Care is not a right in the US, just something most people have gotten used to.

We are free, and so are the insurance companies.

Edit: The Gov has been doing this for ages. Look up Peguvian Taxes.

They're not legislating lifestyles. They're trying to get people to be healthy, and don't care how they do it. I agree with the raise. The stats show how much more often unhealthy lifestyles use health care than those with healthy lifestyles. Why should they not pay more if they're much more likely to have to consume the service? Insurance is about probabilities. Obese people should still be willing to pay the insurance to avoid the chance of needing to pay for ridiculous medical bills if caught without insurance.

You can also argue that obese or unhealthy people cost the economy much more than just health care. How much time do they lose on sick leave and not working? If you're not producing you're consuming. I'mk for providing incentives to life better lives. What message are you sending unhealthy people? 'Fine you can life the same unhealthy lifestyle, while detracting from the economy, and still pay as little as those who are trying to benefit the economy." That's a terrible incentive.

Well, those SUV's aren't paid for with money from their weekly paychecks, but more likely from a little side pharmaceutical trading that doesn't get reported to the IRS (if you know what I mean ;) )

Stressfull, sedentary jobs have an affect on being overweight as well. Who has the energy to come home to a plate full of yummy steamed vegitables and then whisk over to the gym after 10 hours of work that's got you frazzled and P.O.'d, not to mention that moron guy on the bicycle you ran across while trying to drive home who rode his bike right in the middle of the lane so you couldn't pass !!! :mad:

:p

This sums it up quite nicely
 

But smokers who quit within ten years have no higher incidence of lung cancer than anyone else.

The problem with smoking is that governments still allow cigarettes with nicotine to be sold, and tax them. Rather hypocritical.

Are there cigarettes that don't have nicotine?

If you are working hard for one company, but had something minor, like a skin tumor removed, you will not be covered for cancer if you want to leave that company for a better job.

That's not free. That's called getting F-ked.

On the other hand DocRay, if we Kill All the Fat Jerks we would eliminate 65% of the American population (in your view) and that would probably make the world a better place as far as you are concerned. Pcad would survive however. Despite all the grief I get here, I do not fit the clinical definition of 'fat'. So I personally would still be here to torment you.

You'd hate America somewhat less if you had purchased a load of Apple stock in March like Pcad. Just sayin'. Apple is just getting around to opening an Apple Store in Canada. It's an afterthought, much like your entire nation.

There could be. It would be simple to remove most of the nicotine from tobacco, but then people could just quit when they wanted to. People don't continue smoking because they want to, they have to.

Try and come to market today with any ingested product that has the addiction strength of heroine.

Don't tell that to the $120 Billion fast food industry.


There are other reasons why people get sick and miss work other than being obese/overweight. I can't seeing that being the number one reason for lost work time. What is it? I wouldn't have a clue.

never thought about it like that, but the idea of taxing an addictive product definitely falls into a moral gray area.


couple of other things:
poor=drug dealing, c'mon now.
98% have color tv's? is it possible to find a black and white tv anywhere? That stat makes you sound like a grumpy old codger.

Yeah, allowing employers to offer health insurance is one of the worst ideas for workers ever. But it does not change the fact that if something is not against the law and would improve the size of an insurance company's return, they are more than free to do it.



ps- omfg subliminal messages

Pcad raises an important point: if obesity is risky and needs to be surcharged, what about low IQ? Stupid people, do stupid, risky things.

Let's see Apple stock when the prime mortgage renewals are up in a few weeks and the second, bigger shoe drops on the market.

For an afterthought, at least there was some thinking involved.

http://skeptically.org/economics/id21.html

Don't get fixed on thinking that lung cancer is the only way you can die from the effects of smoking. Long term changes from the smoking can result in complications from other diseases that can do you in. :(

but there are hundreds of examples of health insurance companies refusing to pay out and getting charged under law or getting sued. It's just a matter of who has more to spend on lawyers.

Absolutely. Emphysema is a big killer. Heart attack rates drop out of smoking deaths, but the two are linked.

But then why do people sell and tax cigarettes?

Everyone happily accepts pre-screening for life insurance, yet are up in arms over doing the same for health insurance.

So what's the difference? You should be cut a break because of some genetic pre-disposition? We should make fat a protected class?

The insurance companies are already charging your employer based on their claim payout. Noone seems to have a problem there, since it makes perfect sense. It's only when you get down to the individual level that people start defending their freedom to be fat or on eight different prescriptions, or take their kid to the emergency room for a runny nose.

Maybe people need to see a little more correlation between their habits and their costs - in addition to the small copays we have grown accustomed to.