I'll show them!!!!!!
Yes, me too!
Posted on 04/18/2005 5:44:13 AM PDT by FlyLow
Since 1964, thanks to taxes, lawsuits, social pressure and prevention programs, the percentage of Americans who smoke has dropped from 65 percent to 25 percent. It's time to tackle obesity just as aggressively.
Libertarians, the fast-food industry and advocates for the obese object to "nanny-statism" and discriminatory incentives to fight the obesity epidemic. But in all likelihood, we'll need negative as well as positive pressure to slim America back down to a healthy size.
Lawsuits like the one pending against McDonald's aren't my preferred solution — they'll likely benefit trial lawyers more than consumers — but taxes on the fat content of food would be useful, and so would higher insurance premiums for those who are overweight.
The life insurance industry does impose higher premiums for the obese, but not as large as it does for smokers. And the health insurance industry generally provides lower premiums on a limited basis only as a reward for participation in diet-and-exercise programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
And they all park in handicapped parking spots.
Who the **** is Mort Kondracke to tell me I can't have a double meat cheeseburger and fries with gravy if I want. I don't know him, never met him yet he thinks he should dictate my diet. These Coercive Utopians never give up. They just regroup and bully again. Someone please tell Mor-ton and his pantywaist totalitarians that The Volstead Act was repealed. Go crochet somewhere, you twit.
"In the meantime, life insurance companies do charge an average of 25 percent higher premiums when would-be policyholders are 30 percent or more overweight.
On the other hand, smokers customarily are charged 75 percent to 100 percent higher premiums than nonsmokers, even though obesity presents a risk just as great as smoking."
And don't be like the mother who bought her daughter fast food every night because she didn't have time to cook dinner, then turn around and sue the fast food companies because the daughter is fat!
Oh, yes!
I think you might start caring if it caused your healthcare premiums to increase.
The trick to that is not to sit down with a container of snack foods, but to serve yourself out a reasonable portion. When I'm having some nuts or even potato chips (I try not to eat those too often, although the vending machine 50 ft away from my cubicle is a constant temptation, LOL), I get a bowl - a small pyrex glass bowl for nuts, a smallish pottery bowl for chips - and dole myself out a reasonable portion. If I go back for more, it is a concious decision.
I've porked up a bit in the last couple of years, and I think it has to do letting myself indulge my taste for fast food a little too often. Also the lack of activity for a couple of months this winter after I broke my collarbone skiing.
What possible connection does fat peoples acceptance of their responsibility for being fat, have to do with health care costs?
You aren't going to claim that fat people who accept responsibility are healthier than fat people who blame someone else are you? Fat is fat, who cares why they think they are fat?
She has to sue the fast food companies for her daughter's fatness. Otherwise the mother is forced to admit her own lack of "motherhood" is the root of her daughters gross obesity.
Yes, me too!
I'm fat...I don't contribute to higher health care costs. I haven't been to a doctor in years. All that health care just makes me worse. I do a better job of fighting this disease on my own.
Well, I sure hope this guy doesn't smoke. He will certainly get double whammed!
Let's make eating in public buildings and bars and restaurants ILLEGAL. If people want to eat, force them out into the streets and the inclement weather.
Good, they should also make large SUV's illegal and force people to drive tiny cars. Fa people would have to lose weight before they could drive as they wouldn't fit in the government mandated small cars.
No, I don't support additional taxes on high fat foods. But when you hear about situations like those mentioned in post #90, it seems clear that something is out of whack.
We gotta do something!!! The national obesity rate skyrocketed one night in 1998. That's when Schwarzenegger became obese and Mel Gibson and Michael Jordan became officially overweight, along with 61% of the rest of us, without even eating a thing!
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0229/news-shapiro.shtml
"In 1998, the National Institutes of Health came up with new guidelines based on a complicated height-weight calculation that determines something called the "body mass index" or BMI. (Your BMI is your weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared; to get yours quickly, go to the BMI calculator at www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi.) Before, the government didn't call you overweight until, if you were a woman, you had a BMI of 27.3 (164 pounds for someone 5-foot-5) or if a man, 27.8 (205 pounds for a 6-footer).
Now you're officially overweight once you hit a BMI of 25, whatever your gender (for someone 5-foot-5, that's 150 pounds; for someone 6-foot, 184 pounds). Obesity, previously not precisely quantified, now sets in at a BMI of 30 (180 pounds for the 5-foot-5 person, 221 pounds for the 6-foot- tall individual."
That's wonderful and all, but you aren't supporting 'sin' taxes are you?
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