Obesity and Healthcare Reform

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While everyone rants and raves on one side or the other about healthcare reform, little is said about one major contributing factor to the outrageous cost of healthcare.   Fat people.   I know it is a term that makes everyone flinch as it is no longer politically correct.   There are other terms to use instead, full figure being one of my favorites, but at the end of the day there are only two real terms that apply.   The first is obesity.   The second is fat.

That’s right–fat.   We are a fat country.  We are a nation that eats like pigs.   We have more all you can eat buffets in this country than anywhere else in the world.  Maybe we have more all you can eat buffets than there are in the rest of the entire world combined.   We stuff food into ourselves as if we were loading up to hibernate in the winter.   We got to the big buffets and just pile food on top of food until our oversized plate looks absolutely grotesque with its oddball combination of food, laid out this way and that.  We put the smoked salmon with the pork chops, the pizza with the chocolate souffle.   We would put our ice cream on our T-Bone steak if most buffets didn’t extend the hospitality of a dessert plate.   We eat cabbage and crustaceans with equal glee.  We don’t care.  As long as it is food.  Dump it on and stuff it down.

And while food is relatively cheap in this country our binge overeating formula and guide to what we call happiness does not come without a price tag.  In fact, our eating habits are quite expensive.  Two thirds of our country is overweight and 25 to 30% are seriously obese.  Fat.  A walking health danger.

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Additionally, it has been reported on WEBMD.Com that obesity can lead to brain loss.  The brain may actually atrophy because someone is too damn fat.   And then there is, for the bonus plan, an increased risk of dementia.

It would seem that this damning evidence combating obesity should not merely be a suggestion.  Obese people should be penalized and forced to pay more for their indulgence.   Better, still, if they lost weight, but that would mean self-denial and increased discipline, and we are hardly a nation for that, anymore.

So before we start worrying about pulling the plug on grandma and some other arcane, if not insane ideas, that have popped their little pus heads on the public scene during the past couple of months, maybe we should concern ourselves with the reality of our own condition and get to work on that.   Eat better.  Eat less.   And move around some.  Who knows, you may even get to like it.

Author: Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic behavior in the late twentieth century. He has recently published The Cuban Quarter, The Blood Orange, and The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He is the author of The Constant Travellers. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.