I’m a nurse as well. My job is to give excellent care regardless of that patient’s financial status..lifestyle choices or physical impairments. No one I know is a “perfect specimen of health”. Be careful...for one day they may deem you too old, too poor and not productive enough in society to deserve their time and attention.
Then you are a fool. You CANNOT give excellent care which ignores the patient's lifestyle choices. Or their self-induced physical impairments. You might as well hand out Band-Aids for headaches!
Morbid obesity causes many problems. You cannot treat the symptoms without addressing the cause.
And financial status? In my wife's case, she overheard the doctors choosing treatment based on what Medicaid would pay for in Arizona. I cannot access drugs my insurance does not approve of, or pay for, unless I pay for them out of pocket. I cannot see doctors without a referral, and my insurance may refuse me a referral. Again, that means no go unless I pay out of pocket.
Welcome to the world! My insurance doesn't pay for anything and everything. Neither does Medicaid, nor Medicare. Life doesn't work like that.
Replacing knees on the very fat is pissing in the ocean. It does the patient no good. It only puts money in the pockets of hospitals and doctors. MASKING an ailment is bad medicine.
Suppose you had 10 patients. Treating them for their symptoms will cost $1000. You have $200 in your budget. How do YOU prioritize? Do you spend all your money on the 5 patients who could solve their problem with a lifestyle change, and then stiff the other 5 who cannot? Or do you, like a liberal, insist on raising taxes by $800 so you can do good things with other people's money?
Why is it people of FreeRepublic, of all places, cannot understand that treatment costs money, and money is not in limitless supply - not even for the government!?
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money." - Margaret Thatcher