Obesity is a Bigger Threat to Health Care Than Obamacare

Yahoo ^ | 4/15/12 | Roy A. Barnes

[Libloather]

Obesity is a Bigger Threat to Health Care Than Obamacare
By Roy A. Barnes | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 10 hrs ago

COMMENTARY | HealthDay News reported Friday on a Mayo Clinic employees/retirees study showing obese people are more responsible for health care costs annually per person than normal weight people by $1,850, and $5,500 more if they're morbidly obese. Furthermore, 20.6 percent of health care costs are due to obesity, or $190.2 billion annually, according to Cornell University research also reported by HealthDay News.

TV and other media pundits can rant and rave about the costs of Obamacare, but while they do that, I've never heard them specifically factor in the above costs that are due to obesity, nor the indirect costs. The anti-Obamacare people need to realize obesity is a bigger threat to the health care system than the president's health care plan.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Libloather.

Partisan Media Shills ping.

[catnipman]

So, the anit-Obamacare “ranters” haven’t been ranting about obesity, hey? Ergo, ObamaCare (TM) must be good, right? Wonderful logic, me thinks.

Well, the “ranters” haven’t been ranting about sedentaryness, tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, junk food and sugar consumption or drug abuse either, all of which are also major contributors to poor health and health care costs. I guess the lack of ranting about these problems are even reasons ObamaCare (TM) is a wonderful thing, right?

[Chode]

you're right, what was i thinking???

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Obesity doesn’t tyrannically dictate every aspect of your very soul and being.

[SevenofNine]

You know what I hate

California has new commerical called California for Change it obesity program that try gulit trip parents do something about their kids they want public pay for it I am serious I think you could find the commerical on YOU TUBE IN English and Spanish some of the commerical is totally Nannystate

[PGalt]

Obamacare/Totalitariancare: an internal threat to “freedom” - the likes of which our country has never seen before. The fundamental transformation of our republic into an authoritarian dictatorship.

[Wuli]

“HealthDay News reported Friday on a Mayo Clinic employees/retirees study”

What is the data-evidence that results of the study were adjusted for the demographic differences between the obese Mayo Clinic employees and retirees versus the nation’s obese, or that the cost data of the Mayo Clinic health plan were adjusted for their differences with national costs in the general population?

To answer my own question - none, I imagine. Which makes the Mayo Clinc’s interpretation of what their study says about Obamacare suspect.

We cannot forget that the Mayo Clinic and its people were some of the first jumping on the Obamacase bandwagon.

[achilles2000]

Here there is two fast food places in every block and no farmer market either. There be no buses neither, but we find supermarket and buy food. I can eat at fast food and not get fat too. Just don’t eat too much or only fried stuff.

[doug from upland]

Yes, this should be private enterprise setting the market for insurance. I pay lower auto insurance than some others because of no tickets or accidents. I want that benefit so I drive carefully. In health insurance, I want the benefit of lower premiums because I try to take care of myself.

[eXe]

You just watch and see how they hype up “Obesity” and use it as a mechanism to control what everyone eats, whether they are obese or not.

[mo]

The dangerous ones here are the Feds and ObamaCare

[Chode]

it never ends...

[LomanBill]

>>Obesity allows you to live the way you want

Hmmm. People “want” to live with an oxygen tube up their nose whilst wheezing along on a battery powered cart in the Ice Cream aisle?

Ok.

Obamacare sure doesn’t appear to be having a positive impact on (or at least a reduction in) certain members of the obesity of The One’s primary constituency:

“New Black Panther Party chief of staff Michelle Williams talks with 10 News reporter Melanie Michael.”
http://www.wtsp.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1557353015001

Maybe it’s all the “Free” pie?

[RetiredTexasVet]

ObamaCare will not fix obesity but will cost more not to fix it.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

obese people are more responsible for health care costs annually per person than normal weight people

Hey, how about we return to a model in which every adult is personally responsible for his or her own health care and health insurance? That way, obesity quickly reduces to a personal issue which is no one else's business. Problem solved.

[bgill]

These stories disgust me because they're based on horse hockey. I pay a hefty health care insurance premium every month yet it's been for-e-ver since I hauled my fat rear to the doctor. The last time they charged me $600 for basically nothing. I found out I could have bought the medicine they gave me at Walgreens for $1. Don't blame me for using up precious medical service. Instead the smokers and hypochondriacs should be thanking me for paying for them.

[editor-surveyor]

Obesity is nothing more than a word.

Leftists love to play with words; especially words that have no objective meaning.

[jonrick46]

The illegal drug industry has made our children prisoners in their own homes. When I was a kid, we had rocks and knew how to hit a chipmunk from 60 ft away. We were climbing trees to see who could climb the tallest tree and sliding down the branches from 30 feet up—it was quite the ride. We dug tunnels six feet deep and 20 ft long, tree forts to have a view, built buggies to go down the street with the hill and built wings for our bicycles to fly in the air. We swung on ropes from the highest branch of an old Magnolia tree and played football in the back yard with ten of the neighborhood kids—girls included. There was just cigarettes and alcohol and three channels of TV. No drug pushers (we would have treated them with one of our rocks). But when our mothers called us in for dinner, we all said “Oh no!” It was time to go indoors and we just hated it when our fun had to end.

Now the kids are safe and fat and don’t know how to throw a decent rock.

[editor-surveyor]

Good, they’ll live longer.