Parrot
Morton Kondracke of the Whittier Daily News suggests that the War on Fat should take its cues from the War on Tobacco in this editorial. I found this a little amusing:
The life-insurance industry does impose higher premiums for the obese, but not as large as it does for smokers.
That's assuming a fat person can actually get health insurance in the first place. I highly suspect that Morton hasn't tried to get individual insurance, ever - the standards are even more strict than one can imagine.
Ultimately Morton's piece simply reviews everything we've heard lately - he parrots everything without offering anything but one new idea, and that is taxing the hell out of foods that (someone) deems as "bad." That's it. In the interim he uncritically pulls out every stat you've had beaten into your head. 300,000 deaths per year. Almost everyone's too fat. It's costing us a ton of money.
If he's so very concerned about fat, why isn't he analyzing the current situation for fat people in this country and suggesting real alternatives? Just repeating what the rest of the media says and wrapping it in a neat little package doesn't mean it's an improvement of any kind. [Thanks Sandy!]
New Diet for Fetuses! | The CDC is So Busted: Fat Stats Overblown 14x
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| aces219 |
April 19th, 2005 | Link |
This editorial is
This editorial is ridiculous. I'm a life insurance pricing actuary - don't you think we would charge fat people more if we had the mortality experience to back it up? We don't! People not on the (IMHO, too restrictive) height-weight chart are charged a substandard premium, and yes, it's much less extra than a smoker would pay. Smokers have much worse mortality! We have studies to prove this. Insurance companies are not going to willingly lose money - they would raise premiums if they felt it was necessary to cover their exposure. The other thing is, life insurance companies use other underwriting criteria, such as whether you actually have health problems. This makes a lot more sense to me. I wish they'd do away with the height-weight tables altogether, but that will never happen.
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| GregShaw |
April 20th, 2005 | Link |
Hey does anyone here have
Hey does anyone here have any numbers on denials of insurance based on fat? We're shopping a proposal at the San Francisco board of supes to get a buyin to the city health plan for people who've been denied health coverage due to body size, and we need better numbers.
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| QitelRemel |
April 23rd, 2005 | Link |
I read that article. Tried
I read that article. Tried to critique it to my mother...and got one of her typical anti-fat screeds. Whatever.
-Qit
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