Eating our way to health care reform
Jenson Hagen
A study out by the CDC has been floating around the news. Supposedly, overweight Americans cost our health care system an additional $147 billion each year. That's huge.
We have 47 million uninsured Americans. If we reallocated that money away from treating overweight people, we would have $3,100 per year available to put toward health insurance premiums for the uninsured. That's assuming we live in an ideal world where we actually care about assisting the uninsured and we all have an interest in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
It's not just health care savings. When we stop eating doughnuts, ice cream, cookies, pies, bacon double cheeseburgers and deep-fried Twinkies, we have more disposable income to put toward our own health care needs, which in theory should be less if we stop eating all the high-fat, high-fructose foods that we are consuming on a daily basis.
Honestly, how did we ever get to this point of having 100 million obese citizens? Oregon ranks somewhere in the middle. I think it speaks to much deeper cultural problems when you have this level of ill-health. We work too much. We overlook nature. We are highly self-indulgent. An unhealthy mind has created an unhealthy body in my opinion.
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Jul 28, '09
Lots of reasons-- including: artificial preservatives in food, high sodium intake (read the label on that can of chili!) not eating enough fruits and vegetables (as many have pointed out, if the local store doesn't have lots of fresh produce and it is tough to get to a store that does, frozen and canned are about the only choices), sedentary lifestyle, the number of products which contain high fructose corn syrup.
11:02 a.m.
Jul 28, '09
Not to mention the impact that diets heavy in meat and dairy have on the environment. Who's going vegan for a month?! I'll help you shop for groceries and set you up with some delicious recipes!
Jul 28, '09
Jenson Hagen,
Awww it's so easy to make thing super simple with tunnel vision. Next time try a more in depth analysis.
11:11 a.m.
Jul 28, '09
"An unhealthy mind."
Seriously, pull your head out of wherever it is. Multiple studies going back a number of years have shown that a primary cause for the rise of obesity in this country is poverty. Fattening, starchy foods are cheaper to purchase than nutritious fresh vegetables. For people on a budget, pressed between working multiple jobs to make ends meet, without access to quality health care, etc., it's simply easier to load up on fillers like macaroni and cheese, chips, and sugary soda that's cheaper than bottled water.
The idea that you'd be reallocating money away from the obese to the uninsured falls apart when you take into account that there's going to be a lot of overlap between those two groups.
It's not as if anyone who's actually had to live on a limited income for any length of time would need a study to tell them this, though. Eggs, beans, rice, cheese. Those are the basic building blocks of pretty much every meal you eat when you're poor. And yeah, in moderation, there's nothing intrinsically fattening about that diet, but it's not particularly nutritious, what without green vegetables. And you can still be hungry, even if you're technically full.
Jul 28, '09
It's the other way around. An unhealthy food supply has made unhealthy bodies that have unhealthy thoughts.
So much food is siphoned off to food processing and added chemicals junk that if we all wanted to eat fresh whole foods for a week, there wouldn't be enough in the grocery stores.
Jul 28, '09
I hate food nazis.
Jul 28, '09
Eating good food is simple...but people are so busy looking and acting busy, they have no time realize that good, simple food is a necessity. It's SO cheap to eat healthy. Fruit & veggies are inexpensive and so easy to prepare, especially in summer where everything goes on the grill. People think they are saving time with these 'convenient' choices...in fact they are wasting time...cutting their lives shorter, Thanks for the post...totally agree with you.
3:30 p.m.
Jul 28, '09
On health care reform. Breaking news! Senator Jeff Merkley just absolutely and completely earned his paycheck.
Jul 28, '09
I don't think anyone really knows why there are so many fat people in the USA nor does anyone seem to know how to reverse the trend. The poverty angle doesn't really fly because nobody is forcing poor people to stuff their faces with food. There are a lot of poor people around the world who maintain a reasonable weight but in the USA there seems to be some sort of behavior trigger that causes the overeating. I don't buy the fast food angle either because once again, nobody is forcing anyone to actually go stuff a cheeseburger in their mouth. People are voluntarily killing themselves with junk food for some reason and nobody really seems to understand the mechanism behind it.
Charging fat people an extra amount on their healthcare tab would make sense, but it probably won't happen anytime soon. If there is a universal health care plan at some point then it might get interesting to see how this dynamic plays out. The number of voluntarily un-healthy people in the USA is quite high. At some point the healthy people might decide to stop paying extra to keep enabling the obese, the smokers, the drug abusers, etc.
These are the kinds of issues that will get brought to the table if a universal health care plan is implemented. Especially if economic factors make it impossible to cover everyone. The cheeseburger addicts will have a hard time explaining why they should be able to get heart transplants if there aren't enough to go around.
Jul 28, '09
While I totally agree with the premise that taking responsibility for the things we put in our bodies could and would very likely reduce numerous health-related problems, advancing a "free" or public healthcare agenda would certainly give people less incentive to take better control of their behavior, including their diet. I realize that it is currently the popular thing to do in liberal circles to promote single-payer/government run health care...just as an immediate withdrawl from Iraq was the popular talking point a couple of years ago...but we all know that no reasonably intelligent person actually believes that government run healthcare will improve or even maintain the quality of health services in this country. America has, by far, the highest quality healthcare in the world...that is not a debatable issue, there is no other side to that coin. The embarrassing bafoon we currently have the White House has certainly embraced a plethora of unbelievably bad ideas, but abandoning the highest quality healthcare system in the history of the world to adopt a government run plan modeled after clearly inferior systems from around the globe is without a doubt the most intellectually bankrupt idea Barry has come up with yet. The assertion that a "public option" would simply give people a choice to keep their current plan or sign up for the "free" government run plan, is so devoid of honesty that I won't even dignify it with any more attention..we all know what the idea is behind this. But hey...why listen to me..maybe take it from a someone who actually knows just how bad an idea this is. http://www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php
I never thought I'd say this, but I actually long for the days when all you guys did was burn flags and hug trees...it made most of us kind of sick but at least it was worth a good laugh.....so do America a favor and leave the important stuff to the adults...there are plenty of lonely trees out there looking for a hug.
Jul 28, '09
Murph & Boats,
It's true. My wife works as a medical transcriptionist and 90% of the patients she types on are overweight, and most of their problems are directly related to obesity. My wife has typed for clinics in New Hampshire, Alabama, Alaska, Oregon, & California - and for every type of medicine you can think of.
There are lots of medical journals that speak to this very issue. Go read them if you want the facts.
Jul 28, '09
I wish fatty Michael Moore would go on a diet, what a loser. No wonder he advocates government healthcare - we wants everyone else to pay to take care of his fat ass.
Jul 28, '09
Wow... so if you're overweight, you shouldn't be allowed to have health insurance according to Jenson Hagen. Just let them eat cake and die, is what he's really saying. After all, if treating overweight people is going to cost him more, then just disallow their coverage, even if they have no health problems right now. Of course, all those people who have chronic health problems that aren't overweight are just fine- they get to keep their coverage for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure- just as long as they don't get FAT.
If you're overweight, you have an unhealthy mind too, according to Jenson Hagen. Impure thinkers, those overweight people. I guess that Jenson is more in favor of lobotomies and starvation camps for overweight people than making sure ALL Americans have access to quality medical care without being discriminated against for any reason.
All that talk about outlawing denials for pre-existing conditions? Sorry Jenson, that means fat folks get coverage whether you like it or not. Go have a cookie and deal with it.
6:57 p.m.
Jul 28, '09
MBD, I think you're taking it in the wrong direction.
Rather, I have one simple proposal:
TAX CORN SYRUP
It's manufactured by a small number of producers (so it's easy to tax) and it's the common bad ingredient in all those obesity-causing foods.
7:13 p.m.
Jul 28, '09
Kari,
Corn syrup is glucose. That is what every cell in our body runs on. Corn syrup will just jack your blood sugar levels.
High fructose corn syrup on the other hand is far worse. There is not a single cell in the body that runs off fructose. It must be converted by the liver into glucose. But the liver converts it into more than just glucose and therein lies the problem.
Eating fructose is just as bad for your health as smoking, but our society has not evolved enough to strike up a witch hunt against fructose quite yet.
Jul 28, '09
"America has, by far, the highest quality healthcare in the world...that is not a debatable issue,"
BWWWAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
(snort)
Oh sweet jesus - thanks for the laugh!
Actually the U.S. is ranked #33 or #34 (depending on the ranking system you choose)
France is #1.
Google. Use it.
Jul 28, '09
Dear JJ:
I am deeply sorry regarding the last post. If I gave you the impression that healthcare in the United States is subpar and ranked #33 in the world - I was mistaken.
The U.S. is actually ranked #37 - behind Malta, Iceland, Columbia, Chile, and Costa Rica.
BUT WE TOTALLY KICK SLOVINIA'S BUTT! WAHOO!!
Jul 28, '09
Bad food choices are caused by many reasons, usually several working together: cost, prep time, knowledge about nutrition, knowledge about food prep, learned behaviour/choices from childhood, additives which have an addictive quality, advertising, psychology, etc etc etc.
I appreciate that you wish to broach the subject, but your post is far too simplistic for the subject matter. There are volumes written about this subject and still no good answers that are truly workable as yet.
Jul 28, '09
Kari-
I'd like to preface this comment with a statement that I have been a longtime BO reader, and celebrate the success of BO. It is a daily stop on my web schedule.
That said, your statement that taxing corn syrup is the solution to solving obesity in America is remarkably simplistic and ill-informed. Yes, HFCS is a bad actor in many, many foods. It is not the only bad actor- you must take into account the freedom with which food manufacturers have had to develop products designed to get people hooked, whether they contain HFCS or not. You must also take into account the accessibility to fresh, non-processed foods that impacts many communities in which obesity is a problem. Even here in Portland, the organic/vegan/sustainable center of the universe, there are communities without access to grocery stores, without the money to feed families on the fresh foods they should.
Add to this the constant humiliation and discrimination overweight and obese people face when they truly try to get help from the medical community. There are a lot of medical professionals out there who are much less than helpful when it comes to serving these patients.
Obesity in America is a multi-faceted problem. Simply throwing a tax on one problem child won't solve the crisis, just as refusing health services out of some twisted moral justification shown by your diarist shown today won't solve it either.
1:01 a.m.
Jul 29, '09
Pretty funny coming from someone signing themselves as "Electronic Cigarette." Fruit and veggies aren't that cheap if you don't have good access to them, and a lot of the poorest sections of the cities and towns in this country have far better access to cigarettes and beer than they do to fresh produce. For lots of poor people in this country, convenience stores and small markets are the nearest or only sources of food. Maybe you haven't dropped in on your local 7-11 lately, but the "fruit & veggies" selection is pretty minimal.
You're right, andy, nobody's holding a gun to their heads and telling them to eat. If they'd just stop eating, then they'd all die and go away, wouldn't they? What you seemed to miss in the study I cited is that the type of food you tend to get when you're poor is simply more fattening than healthy food. Ounce for ounce-- even if you don't stuff your face -- you get more empty calories out of the kind of foods that tend to be available to you if you're poor.
Frankly, the people who try to paper over the poverty/obesity link are no different than the global warming deniers. For at least two decades studies have been coming out verifying the connection between poverty in the industrialized world and obesity. It's probably been lonbger, but I first remember them after the Ronald Reagan "ketchup is a vegetable" school lunch debacle.
It's really not that hard to see the link. Obesity tends higher in states with higher rates of poverty. Obesity tends higher in racial groups with higher rates of poverty. As immigrant groups adopt a more American menu, rates of obesity go up.
Sure, there are poor people in the rest of the world who aren't obese. There are plenty of malnourished or starving poor people who aren't obese. But those people aren't living in the United States or other industrialized countries. And yes, there are people who are simply fat or piggish who are well-off, if you want to talk about a public health issue, you need to address where the bulk -- shall we say -- of the problem is.
Maybe you folks who want to pretend that these studies don't exist can just make the argument that the rich aren't as fat because they're better than the poor people. That their "healthy minds" (it sounds soooo Barbara Bush, doesn't it?) have created more "healthy bodies". Me, I'll go with science and research.
And really, Kari, what possible good would a tax on HFCS have? The cost would just get passed along. You'd be taxing poor people who are already struggling to keep afloat for the crappy food that makes them fat. Why not try to get them out of poverty instead?
Jul 29, '09
While I agree mostly with the direction of the Jenson...it's not just the food that makes Americans fat. It's laziness. It's driving everywhere. It's not having the willpower to put down the french fry...or perhaps to not order the deluxe size in the first place.
But Kari's also wrong. You can't just tax what you consider bad and say problem solved! Would you lose the extra pounds if someone told you your Big Mac was going to cost an extra $0.50? No. You'd grumble about encroaching government, higher taxes, and continue eating a Big Mac.
You have to provide positive incentives for what is good. Everyone likes rewards. Until the legislature passed a mandate on insurance companies this last session (I think), most Oregon insurers didn't cover smoking cessation treatments, drugs, etc. DUH! How about providing discounted rates on health insurance to people who (verifiably) belong to a gym and regularly attend? who aren't overweight? who don't smoke? who get regular checkups and recommended screenings (e.g. mamograms, colonoscopies, etc.)?
Health care reform, and coverage expansion has to be accompanied by positive system and incentive reform that rewards good actors. Everyone likes to be rewarded for good behavior. And there isn't a bigger motivator in America than money.
1:23 a.m.
Jul 29, '09
Although sometimes you have less choice than you think:
Jul 29, '09
Yes, it is true that many (most) people will eat more if more is on their plate. I'm that way myself, I'll usually eat everything on my plate even it is a little too much. But guess what, when I go to a fast food place I usually order the small rather than the large box of fries. I still weigh roughly the same that I did in high school so that strategy must be working. If I can manage to just order the small fries instead of the jumbo fries then I suppose other people can also.
9:48 a.m.
Jul 29, '09
You seem to have missed the last paragraph of the story where even the small portion of fries had increased in calories by 15% and a small soda is twice the size it used to be.
You also seem somewhat shaky on the concept of statistics. Anecdotal evidence that you, andy, weigh the same as you did in high school is what you would call insignificant in terms of national health trends. For one thing, even in the demographics where obesity is at its highest, it's still a minority of the population subset. Most people are not obese. On another point, weighing the same as you did in high school wouldn't necessarily be a good thing if you were a fat kid in high school. Surely there were fat kids at your high school. Statistically speaking, there are probably more of them there now.
Jul 29, '09
The point is that I manage to maintain my weight at a healthy point by not stuffing food in my face even though calories are cheap and easy to come by. Why can't everyone else be responsible for their own behavior and do the same. And if they can't be responsible and take care of their bodies then why should I pay for their health care?
10:14 a.m.
Jul 29, '09
Posts like this one are going to come back in the future to haunt Blue Oregon the same way the forced sterilization of institutionalized citizens in Oregon did a few years back.
Callous disregard for the rights of others, implicit racism -- because when you're dealing with a problem as thoroughly linked to poverty as obesity is and casting it a failure of self-control you're feeding the gaping maw of the racists out there -- and essentially a war on the poor in the supposed goal of health.
What a great strategy for throwing away a Democratic majority. By all means, promote stuff like this and see how fast anyone who takes it up can alienate the poor and the working class voters who are not only disproportionately affected by the economic tribulations of the day but who also tend to have higher rates of obesity than the middle and upper-class.
10:26 a.m.
Jul 29, '09
Look, I can't help that you seem to be incapable of understanding a word of the studies I posted above. It doesn't have anything to do with stuffing anything, at least not for everyone. I seriously doubt that you're living with limited options about what you have available to eat, which therefore makes whatever you do completely irrelevant.
Jul 29, '09
Poverty is NOT the only cause of obesity. Not by a long shot. I've struggled with weight most of my life, thanks to a childhood diet of soda, candy, and fatty casseroles. Thankfully, because of years of hard work, self-educating on nutrition, and exercise, I'm now healthy and fit. I grew up middle-class, never going hungry or without access to a good grocery store with plenty of fresh fruit and veggies. Most of my friends, coworkers and family members are overweight or obese and all of them are much better off financially than me.
What do I think the cause is? The American "bigger and more convenient" mentality that is so easily seen in our propensity for eating out and what we view as appropriate portion sizes. When my husband moved here from England over a year ago (where, yes, they have a government-run healthcare system that works great, rated 18 by WHO - compared to America, #37), he was stunned by how large the portion sizes are in our restaurants. When we go out to eat, we share an entre and always end up with a good-sized doggie bag to take home for a couple more meals.
And really starts with kids. Look how many fat kids we have in this nation. My weight problems never started until I was a teenager. As a kid, I was outside all day playing and being active. I see so many kids that hardly go outside to play, and just sit inside playing video games and watching TV. Those kids will have to battle their entire lives because of the decision their parents made on diet and exercise. It's sad.
8:36 p.m.
Jul 29, '09
Who said that it was?
The studies I cited showed that rates of obesity rise in groups with higher rates of poverty and that higher income groups had a lesser incidence of obesity. They didn't say that only poor people were obese or that only rich people were thin or that poor people were all obese or that rich people were all thin.
What that indicates is that as you look down the economic scale, people -- for whatever combination of reasons -- tend to be fatter. Again, it doesn't matter if you know lots of people better off than you are who are fat; no matter how true that is, according to the statistics, a higher percentage of the people in the country who are below you on the economic ladder are obese than those above you. Anecdotal evidence means jack all.
This is basic population statistics, people. Now, if you want to argue that poor people -- who tend toward obesity more than middle-class or rich people and who tend not to be able to go out to eat as often as ALD and her husband -- are just fat bundles of uncontrollable urges that are more refined and in check in their better-to-do brethren and that's why more of them are obese, well, go ahead. That kind of "the rich are morally superior to the poor" rhetoric does sell well to a lot of people in the US, even people who should know better.
Jul 30, '09
darrelplant: I understand your statistics. I was making observations and reacting to the posts I had read. What I really want to know is how in the world did you think that my comment was an argument that "the rich are morally superior to the poor"?!
Just to throw in your face how massively off base you are, I've been on food stamps before. I've been unemployed, rationing my money week to week and still barely getting by. I've walked to minimum-wage work on several occasions because my car was broken down, I couldn't afford to fix it, and I couldn't afford a bus ticket. Not having insurance (I made literally $.10 too much for Medicaid) and ignoring illnesses because I couldn't afford a medical bill on top of everything else. I was fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time in enough cicumstances over the last few years to bring myself up out of that level of poverty. Today, I do alright after years of making my way slowly up the ladder. I don't have to scrape by just to make the full energy bill payments anymore. My husband finally got a job in this horrible economy and now we're able to breathe a bit. And, yes, we go out to dinner about once or twice a month to treat ourselves with a shared entre and a drink. Ooohhhh... how spoiled I am to allow myself a night out after years of not even being able to afford a Starbucks drink.
So, think before you jump to conclusions and put words in people's mouths. I have nothing but the utmost empathy for the poor because I've been there before. It sucks, it's hard, and most people have no bloody clue what it's like or how difficult it is to get out of that cycle.
11:03 a.m.
Jul 30, '09
ALD, who was putting words into whose mouth when you made the statement "Poverty is NOT the only cause of obesity" as if that had been brought up by anyone in this conversation?
I didn't say that you had made the argument that the poor are inferior, but if you use your feelings and gut instincts to deny the statistical correlation between poverty and obesity, and follow down the "moral failing" road of Jenson and others here by claiming it's the "American 'bigger and more convenient' mentality" that's the main problem -- something that flies in the face of the fact that the people who can actually afford more are less likely to be obese and that this is no longer a strictly American phenomenon, then you're simply ignoring the statistics because they're inconvenient to your argument.
<h2>As for how massively off base I am because of your previous privation, I even addressed that in the last line of my previous post. There are plenty of people who should know better. There are loads of poor people who buy into the GOP philosophy that the rich are rich because they deserve it and that they are poor because they're not worthy. Many, many books have been written on the subject.</h2>