Thoughts on the insurance/political/money side of obesity
I find it rather silly, that the health insurance companies want us to be healthier, but are unwilling to help us pay for things that will help us be healthy.
Treading on dangerous political ground here, but just wondering about others thoughts.
I think medical insurance should only cover medical treatment. Anything beyond that is a bonus. I'm a strong proponent of personal responsibility, and I feel it's beyond their scope. Also, I have private insurance. I go with a high deductible, and don't want all the extra stuff that I should do on my own thrown in there for extra cost.
ETA: I shouldn't say I think it should only cover medical treatment, more that I don't want MINE to cover it, and I don't think it *should" be covered.
We do the exact same thing. High deductible catastrophic. Everything else we have a responsibility to budget in as a family, including births (which we cash paid, it just took some months of saving). Our insurance rates got cheaper when I lost weight, which makes sense since I was higher risk to insure when morbidly obese compared to now. Being healthy is lower financial risk, having pre-existing conditions is higher financial risk. Given that insurance is a risk management tool, that is entirely sensible.
Medical insurance being conflated with health care is a huuuuge pet peeve of mine, because it mixes terms and definitions to the detriment of the consumer. Nobody can insure health, or guarantee an outcome - what they can do is live their lives and decide what level of financial risk is acceptable in that arena. For us, we can pay for glasses, vitamins, well baby checks, childbirth, dermatology, you name it. It is huge, emergent expenses like a hospitalization, cancer, broken bones, etc, that would be beyond our reasonable ability to budget. Thus - we pay a monthly fee to have insurance to cover that level of event. Insurance isn't a stand-in for us budgeting normal life expenses, but rather a system we use as private individuals (we refuse to go through DH's company, on both principle and economy) to best manage our finances against the various risks of life.
Our home insurance, life insurance, and all other small policies we hold function for our household in the same manner - managing risk we could not cover with normal salary and budgeting, alone, in a calculated way
I think medical insurance should only cover medical treatment. Anything beyond that is a bonus. I'm a strong proponent of personal responsibility, and I feel it's beyond their scope. Also, I have private insurance. I go with a high deductible, and don't want all the extra stuff that I should do on my own thrown in there for extra cost.
ETA: I shouldn't say I think it should only cover medical treatment, more that I don't want MINE to cover it, and I don't think it *should" be covered.
I think it all depends on how you define things. I really don't think that obesity is any less of a medical condition that cancer or multiple sclerosis or something. Metabolic syndrome is no joke and I'm not sure why the line need be drawn so that those folks need to buck up and take responsibility but the people who had some genetic predisposition to cancer get to use medical insurance funds to take care of that.
Time and time again, it has been shown that preventative care is cheaper than dealing with the results of a medical condition after it has reached a critical point. That is why many insurance companies have started focusing on it but for many uninsured, preventative care measures aren't in their budget or thoughts or knowledge which results in higher overall medical care costs.
I think more attention needs to be paid towards the political handling of food. The cheapest food is usually the unhealthy food like processed pre packaged junk. Many people cannot afford to buy fresh produce. I think sugary drinks and snacks should be heavily taxed, just like cigarettes. I think that gym memberships, exercise equipment, and associated health activities should be tax-deductible. People need incentives to be healthy.
I agree with the poster above me! I happen to live in an area where people are either very wealthy or very poor. The wealth people are thin, the poor people are fat. The wealthy people can afford to live in the nice, gated, walkable neighborhoods with sports fields, pools, and gyms. They have TIME for yoga classes and running. They can afford to pack nice, interesting, nutritious meals for their kids.
The poor people are just SOL. Often both parents work, there's no extra money for gym memberships. There are some really nice public parks and bike trails...but you can't walk to them from the poorer neighborhoods.
I also live north of New Orleans. Some neighborhoods are just finally getting real grocery stores with fresh food seven years after Katrina.
Being healthy and fit is very very often a function of being well off.
And don't get me started on the kind of crap our government allows big business to pass off as "food." It's disgusting. And oh, the deliberately disseminated misinformation! How do these people sleep at night!
The whole system is BROKEN. Most people can't afford regular health care (glasses, check ups, preventative tests) without insurance but then insurance is expensive and THEY get to choose YOUR treatment. That's just wrong. The whole system is a mess.
As to the OP's original question, the insurance companies don't care if you're healthy or not, they are worried about how much money they are making on you RIGHT NOW.
My health insurance company would pay for weightloss surgery (with deductibles and copays from me) and follow up cosmetic surgery to remove excess skin. BUT they won't pay for the cosmetic surgery because I lost the weight myself by seeing a nutritionist in a medically supervised diet (they did pay for a portion of that).
I know my weight gain is my fault and not my insurance companies (or you, the general public) but it's so weird how they decide what to cover and what not to.
The wealthy people are thin, the poor people are fat. The wealthy people can afford to live in the nice, gated, walkable neighborhoods with sports fields, pools, and gyms. They have TIME for yoga classes and running. They can afford to pack nice, interesting, nutritious meals for their kids.
The poor people are just SOL. Often both parents work, there's no extra money for gym memberships. There are some really nice public parks and bike trails...but you can't walk to them from the poorer neighborhoods.
Being healthy and fit is very very often a function of being well off.
I'm not into this line of thinking anymore. It can be done without being well-off or a gym membership. If there's no time for exercise, calorie counting takes only minutes. I used the "I work full-time and I'm a single mom" excuse for years. When I wanted it bad enough I made the time/effort.
I've lived part of my life with no insurance and part of my life with it. People may disagree with me, but an insurance company is exactly that, a company in business to make a profit.
It can choose who and what it pays for. (unless regulated by law) You can read the benefit plan before choosing to sign up with a company.
An insurance company doesn't take an oath to help people like doctors to. They're bound by legal laws, but not necessarily morality. Sometimes we forget that.
Even with stuff that is covered, check out the hoops they make you jump through to get the expensive stuff. It's crazy. You can't have x unless you have done a, b, c and d first....even though the doctor says you need x!
Ridiculous. Nationalize all of it. Health is a right not a priviledge.
You'll miss my tax dollars if you kill me or I can't work. Trust me on that.
I think this is such a difficult topic because people are so different. There are people out there, that are say obese because they lack the education and resources to lose weight. There are smokers, diabetics ect that want to quit, manage their disease, but really need the guidance. Then there are people that no matter how much money is dumped into preventative care (education, gym memberships, smoking cessation programs ect)they will likely never get off the hamster wheel that is their health issue.
If a patient is receptive to changing and managing their health, insurance companies would fair much better by insuring preventative care. Not to mention people would be healthier!! However, it can be hard to tell which patients will benefit from prevention and which will waste even more $$ at half hearted attempts to "get healthy" and still end up 30 year later with multiple advanced disease processes draining health insurance companies for all the treatment they will need later in life.
If we could figure out a way to know which people are which....
I'm not into this line of thinking anymore. It can be done without being well-off or a gym membership. If there's no time for exercise, calorie counting takes only minutes. I used the "I work full-time and I'm a single mom" excuse for years. When I wanted it bad enough I made the time/effort.
This is heartless to say. For sure it can be done without a gym membership I can't argue with that. However, when a person is facing so many financial, emotional and social problems the last thing they're going to think about is doing push ups in their spare time. I've been a teacher in an economically-challenged neighborhood (Harlem) for 12yrs. Kids there don't have enough money to bring pencils to school, the school is so deprived that teachers pay out of their own pockets to provide pencils, papers and all other supplies kids need. They are on free-lunch (and breakfast and after school snack) programs. Physical education is offered ONCE A WEEK.... and let me tell you what happens there: Because the kids look forward to it so much, their classroom teachers dangle it like a carrot over them "If you don't stop misbehaving little Johnny you won't get to go to Gym tomorrow." I don't have to tell you that under these circumstances many kids are misbehaving and don't get to go to gym.
Now the kids are out of school, and right on the corner awaits the snow-cone man. You know, the guy who has a bucket of shaved ice and serves it to the kids with blue syrup all over it. Now you get the kid back home, where their guardians are buying the cheapest crap snacks for them to eat, sugary juices and whatnots. The kid sits in front of the tv or video game... he certainly can't go outside in the streets to play because of the dangers lurking there. More often than not the kid is taken care of by grandparents because mom's too young to raise a kid/ parents are unemployed/ dad's in jail/ dad's not in the picture/ mom's on drugs etc.
I don't have to tell you that the level of asthma and diabetes in these elementary schools run in the extraordinary numbers. It's not about finding excuses not to work out, have a little heart and a little sympathy that when a child is facing these kinds of circumstances and is worrying about the next meal they get they can't think about taking a healthy walk around the block.
I mean really, school lunches and physical education programs in this country have been slashed to bits. We feed our kids crap, we make them sedentary and then we blame them for growing up to be lazy sedentary adults with too many excuses.
Wannabeskinny - I grew up in a similar neighborhood. My mom worked 2 full time jobs for many, many years and although she can cook, it wasn't a high priority as she was exhausted all the time. Not only are physical education programs being cut and school breakfast/lunch programs filled with junk food but home ec programs where you teach kids how to cook have also been pushed aside. I'm guessing they still exist but I can easily count the number of people I know my age and younger that know how to cook and it is small.
Thoughts on the insurance/political/money side of obesity
