[quote=briansd1]…Should government regulate and raise the prices to save us from ourselves? Or should the people be free to consume cheap stuff?
We’ve decided to let the buyers beware. So, with that predicate, fat people are responsible for their own problems. The fact is that one can’t gain weight unless one consumes more calories that one expends.
If we force fat people to pay proportionately more for their health care, maybe people would make adjustments to their eating habits.[/quote]
Alas, brian, they will not. They will simply get themselves a lawyer who will get them a doctor who will testify that they are totally disabled and cannot work. Presto! Social Security disability judgement. Monthly cash payment. Free health care. Scooters and Med-Lift recliners with heat and massage.
Check out the SS disability diagnosis trends, and how they’ve changed over the past 20 years. As a nation, we decry the increase in obesity as an “epidemic”, yet we are subsidizing that epidemic. Doctors and lawyers that earn their living by aiding Social Security disability applicants repeatedly emphasize the importance of obesity in the determination of benefits process. For instance, if you are obese and have low back pain, you are not only much more likely to be approved for benefits, but also less likely to have a time limit placed on those benefits (due to the widely-held belief that weight loss is usually not maintained) than another LBP applicant who is not obese.
