Did you know that there is a “fat pride” community?  I had no idea.  But it’s not surprising that a group of people sharing a common characteristic band together to protest the injustices they feel the majority of the population puts on them.

Well, it seems that the obese community is feeling particularly mistreated in the ongoing health care reform debate.  The New York Times reports on the point of view of overweight health care consumers in this time of flux.  Much of the health care reform initiatives place an emphasis on disease prevention and rewarding those who are healthy and physically fit with various incentives.  The fat pride community feels slighted by these measures, saying that being obese does not mean that an individual is unhealthy. I mean – how many knee replacements does one have to observe before putting together: fat = joint disease?

While a young obese person may be relatively healthy in the present, it is well established that chronic obesity leads to chronic disease, and chronic disease leads to increased usage of medical resources.  It makes sense that a national health care plan would encourage less spending and therefore include measures to fight the obesity epidemic.

In the NY Times article, there are lots of opinions regarding what this means to the community.  Is it another form of discrimination?  I understand that overweight people don’t want to get screwed out of good health care because of their body habitus.  That’s obviously a reasonable argument, as we don’t do this for other lifestyle choices that cause unhealthiness, e.g. smoking.  We definitely wouldn’t not treat a smoker’s lung disease just because he or she is a smoker.  Just the same, we wouldn’t not treat a fat person’s diabetes just because he or she is fat.  But their claim that they are still perfectly healthy while being obese is absurd.

Just like there has been a national campaign to stop smoking, there should be a national campaign to maintain a healthy weight, and what better way to do that than incorporating it into the national health care reform that is going to totally change our country’s health care system anyway?  The fat pride community should take notice – smoking rates have declined, but obesity continues to rise.

Hold the whipped cream, thanks….

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 8:25 am and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.