Reason for obesity (in my book) is because for a number of decades now, children have not gotten the proper guidance, love and tuitering from parents. Emotional unstability leads to bunging, thinking that eating, specially sweets, will pacify the pain.
Overweight and obese people stick out in a crowd, which is exactly the purpose of being overweight – LOOK AT ME – I NEED HELP!! Emotional stability stems from childhood memories and not having learned to be self-accountable and expecting society to look after you! Take control of your own life – be self-responsible. Do not be a burden on society! Contribute to society iso sucking the juice out of it. Read QBQ by John G. Miller!

I think I’m closer to the MedPundit take on this. I agree that rising rates of obesity are a problem — and that we should do more to educate people about the dangers of obesity.

I veer off on the part about raising the health insurance premiums for obese people, because I can’t get into the idea of separating classes of people by type when it comes to health insurance.

Actuarially (if that’s a word), you can always grade someone’s risk relative to the rest of the people in the pool on just about anything.

But to me, the idea of health insurance is that you spread the risks through grouping so that any one medical emergency isn’t also a devastating economic calamity.

And when you group people by class or habit, when it comes to health, I think it ignores the nature of a medical emergency and the fact that are body systems don’t necessarily subscribe to the car insurance pooling model, based on grouped risks (such as men paying more because they are more “risky”).

It’s just too much of a slippery slope. In theory, I could argue that an otherwise perfectly healthy person who jogs daily on a city or town street with a portable MP3 player with headphones should pay more, because that person runs a higher risk of being struck by a car, tripping over uneven pavement, or all sorts of things.

Or, that a jogger in the example above should face higher premiums for not wearing a healthy jogging shoe that is shown to reduce the risk of knee/ankle/leg injury.

The bigger penalty for the obese isn’t going to be the higher health premium — it’s going to be a sharply increased risk of an early death.

Which is my final point — we can quantify the increased health costs that result from obesity, sure. But if our obese patient isn’t obese, and as a consequence lives to be 80 before succumbing to a long, drawn out battle with cancer, isn’t it at least likely this person would expend the same, if not more, health care dollars then he/she would being obese and dying of heart disease at 60?

I just don’t think we know that.

I can see R.G.’s point of view. The part with life insurance is a good point. It makes sense to assess a risk score on each person buying it when there is a rate determination.

But that’s what scares me about this obesity debate because I think you open up a slippery slope when you do the same for health care.

And maybe the jogger analogy isn’t the best, but in the extreme that’s what happens. We could cut this a million ways: What defines obese vs. non-obese? If we set a figure (body mass, or however), and say, those above pay this and those below pay this lower amount, we open a dangerous door.

Then I can say I want to go a step further. Why should I, with a pretty healthy weight/body mass ratio, pay the same as someone who is “borderline” obese?

Take it a step further. If someone has high blood pressure, even if it’s genetic, and needs expensive meds/maintenance to control it, why should I, with blood pressure of 110/80, have to pay to subsidize that?

The reason I don’t like it for health care, compared to other insurance models, is that I think it should be our goal as a country to provide suitable health coverage for all citizens. Now one could say that attaching monetary penalties to obesity would favor that, because it frees up health dollars for others.

But…

If the prospects of limited mobility, serious illness and premature death won’t motivate weight loss, what makes us think a monetary penalty will?

And, I am not confident that such a penalty, even if intended to someone increase access to affordable health care, would do that. I don’t have confidence in the health insurance industry.

I’d be more inclined to back HSA’s for everyone, so that the insured have some notion of the cost of health care and are encouraged to use health care resources more wisely — regardless of body size.

“I still believe that the obese should have to pay higher insurance premiums. You should be rewarded for a healthy lifestyle.”

Yes, but –
These may be two different things. As far as I know, we do not really have a clear understanding of obesity or its cure. As someone pointed out, the increase in rate of obesity is wierdly congruent with increased publicity of what-your-diet-should-be by government and non-government organizations. Not all obese people are layabouts, either. What is the BMI of an Olympic-class weight lifter? They sure look fat! Sumo wrestlers? Samoans?

If someone is fat, or worse obese, because of life-style (I’ll admit much of my extra weight is my fault – but not all, as I’ve posted before I can gain weight on hospital food/portion-size!) it may be valid to charge more for insuring them for all-encompassing health insurance. But will a standard insurance application form and its and processing make a distinction? I don’t see how, unless companies (and governments) are willing to spend more making the distinction than can be made up by boosting charges.

I am not totally against the idea, just any practical application I can foresee. Convince me a fair fee can be accomplished, and I’ll go along.