What is Digg?511 Comments
- pintomp3, on 01/08/2009, -7/+85And with private insurance they use it as a reason to deny you coverage.
- RevChris2, on 01/08/2009, -17/+91yea , as a Canadian with universal health care I know I hate it when the government weight police stop by and give me a huge fine and haul me off to the reeducation camp.
They also only sell bacon in weight controlled rationed portions up here.
Because everyone knows that in real life instead of balance we go straight to extremes. - zoziw, on 01/08/2009, -3/+60I live in Canada and no one tells me what doctor I can see or how I have to live my life. When I am sick I go to the doctor and money doesn't cross my mind.
- Stormwern, on 01/08/2009, -1/+50Can anyone from Japan/New Zealand etc confirm if these are actually true? There's certainly nothing even remotely like this in Sweden.
- EMFK, on 01/07/2009, -8/+53Interesting read as I'm eating M&Ms. :-)
- qwertyxuiop, on 01/08/2009, -4/+42There is nothing even remotely like this in Canada
this is good ol' fashioned American fear mongering - mickstephenson, on 01/08/2009, -3/+41and in the US I suppose your doctor never discusses the health concerns associated with obesity then? Does this say anywhere that they are forced to go to the counselling? That if they don't attend they wont be entitled to treatment under the Universal system? No, basically you visit your GP and they refer you to a counselling program, which a lot of people would be happy to attend because most Overweight people would rather not be.
You find me a country with a Universal system which refuses all further treatment if you don't attend, and I will eat my words, otherwise this is typical right wing propaganda ***** which you Americans eat up, so willingly. - Bermygoon, on 01/08/2009, -9/+46
***** Americans are paranoid. They currently have no government sponsored health care and when they consider it they look at the total extreme opposite.
Almost every first country has universal healthcare, why not look at some of the less extreme examples please?? This stupid story is like telling the story of a race car driver to a person thinking about getting their divers license. - xeic, on 01/08/2009, -2/+35There isn't either in Spain, France or Portugal.
I've asked a friend of mine who is living in Germany, and nobody is telling him how many bratwürsts he can eat or how many beers he can drink.
Wait, "Christian Science Monitor". How can anybody believe people that name themselves with an oxymoron? - vosik, on 01/08/2009, -1/+33Been living in Japan for last 8 years and user of government insurance all those years:
1. Anyone deemed too fat would be required to undergo diet counseling.
True
2. Those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further "reeducation" and their communities subject to stiff fines.
False
Basically they would recommend you to change your lifestyle, but if you don't care, they will be just another recommendation one year later. Japanese companies have annual health checks to detect or prevent diseases at early stage, so I think it is only for good to undergo them regularly. And counselling consist of doctor telling you about all of your results, not just waistline. - pintomp3, on 01/08/2009, -6/+35Because no one is ever denied treatment with private insurance?
- NCSUspoon, on 01/08/2009, -9/+35What would you rather die of something because your healthcare denied it and you couldn't pay for it? Or would you rather just suffer because Medicare denied your claim? Before you start acting altruistic, keep in mind that this is the decision that 30 million Americans make every day. I think the ammount of people that can be saved by universal healthcare far outweighs the 'broken-grandma-hip' issue.
And if you say, well our system is broken, but universal is not the answer, well then I am sure I and congress would like to hear your ideas. - qwertyxuiop, on 01/08/2009, -3/+29You are incredibly paranoid.
In Canada there is nothing like this, also we have MORE fredom when it comes to our personal healthcare as we can visit any hospital in the country regardless ouf our insurance provider - pintomp3, on 01/08/2009, -6/+30Private insurance and the cancer policy. If you have cancer or any pre-existing condition, they will deny you coverage or treatment.
This article is simple fear-mongering. Your weight is a choice, getting cancer isn't. - inactive, on 01/07/2009, -27/+51You KNOW it's comin'!
- Trupaz, on 01/08/2009, -3/+26I can't believe it took this far down the comments for a fellow CANADIAN to stand up for Uni Health Care.
We can eat what we want, smoke what we want, exercise as little as we want, we have a TON of immigrants - fat, slim, and everything in between - so everyone reading this article needs to step back and consider the source - THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (?) MONITOR.
Wake up people - move to Canada. - jimmies, on 01/08/2009, -1/+23Why would you feel weird? My doctor asks me every time I visit, even though I never have in 30 years of living.
- PuterPrsn, on 01/07/2009, -33/+54Just the tip of the iceberg. What they don't mention is the triage that comes along as well - for example, some medicines and treatments are withheld in England if the patient is deemed too old or if it will only prolong a life for a few years, not cure a problem. Some of these cases made international news last year and can be googled at will. You want to be told that your child can't have expensive chemo because they'll only live to be 15 or so, it won't cure the problem? Or your mother, at age 80, is too old to make a hip replacement worth the money that could be better spent on a younger patient with more years ahead?
- iisabelle, on 01/08/2009, -10/+31"Christian Science"? What an oxymoron... Religion is not science, and science cannot be explained using religious doctrine, because religion and religious beliefs are unfalsifiable. If there is no possible way to begin trying to prove that something is incorrect, then it can't be a correct theory. Since there is no way to prove to somebody who believes in God that God does not exist, then the existence of God cannot be a scientific theory. Compared to other scientific theories, which could be proved wrong using experimentation and observation, religion is not testable. This is why science cannot be supported by religious doctrine.
http://thinkerspodium.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/deg ...
This article is also so clearly written with an agenda in mind that it's almost ridiculous. I live in a country with universal health care, and the government has never told me what not to do any more than the current US government... In fact, they've probably ordered me around less. - gluesniffined, on 01/08/2009, -7/+28Everyone's worries about this are completely unfounded. Universal health care will NEVER happen in the US.......NEVER!
The health care related insurance companies would lose billions of dollars a year and no longer be needed. They have an extremely powerful lobby group and as everyone here knows, in the USA you get the best government you can AFFORD. - PottSie2, on 01/08/2009, -22/+43Sounds fair to me. I would be in favour of charging people who take more risks or take less care of their body/fitness a higher premium or higher taxes.
Nobody should expect to live a lazy or unhealthy lifestyle and expect the government to foot the bill for the consequences of doing so.
However, the elderly should get all our support as the elderly (generally) have paid a lifetime of taxes and worked hard to form our great countries.
Being an Australian I think we have a great miox of public/private healthcare! - superfusion, on 01/08/2009, -3/+23This is idiotic. I can't believe how much American public policy is formed by a crisis cult.
No, there are no waist-police divisions in Canada, a country with universal health care. You pay nothing for health care here (excluding cosmetic surgery, etc), beyond your income taxation. The government does seem to focus heavily on healthy living advertising campaigns: stop smoking, get active. But what's wrong with that.
I see a lot of morbid obesity when I visit the U.S. That kind of thing just doesn't exist in Europe and is less common in Canada. - roodammy44, on 01/08/2009, -7/+27No, it's not at all what socialised healthcare means. And it very much is a paraniod theory.
In fact you have it worse with private healthcare as fatness probably falls under "pre-existing condition" - reaper527, on 01/07/2009, -20/+37its starts with obesity, then they move onto the next thing they don't approve of. pretty soon, the government has total control over what you can see, hear, and think
- Bermygoon, on 01/08/2009, -5/+22
As an American you would. Very strange that your government would care about your health right? - analogkid01, on 01/08/2009, -20/+36"Those who would surrender their liberty for a smaller waistline deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin
- ironrex, on 01/08/2009, -3/+19This is tantamount to claiming our children shouldn't be required to go to schools. They should be free to get no education whatsoever. Except of course then we'd have to pay for their welfare when they got older and couldn't get jobs. So we make them go to school because its better for all of us if everyone goes to school. Just like its better for all of us if everyone is in better shape. Why is this a hard concept to understand?
- contractcentral, on 01/08/2009, -9/+25"Stiff fines". Funny, we call those 'fees' here in Kalifornia.
- mickstephenson, on 01/08/2009, -8/+23If your are going to change the quote that's fine but actually attributing it to Benjamin Franklin is pretty disrespectful.
- brstilson, on 01/08/2009, -3/+18HMOs are not socialized medicine, they are a private industry...that the federal government forces businesses to use. Equating HMOs with socialism is like calling state laws that require car insurance socialism. And who got us into the whole HMO business? Richard Nixon, a Republican. HMOs were a backroom deal to make companies like Kaiser Permanente rich. They have a profit motive behind them, and the system is run like a business. If anything, HMOs are a testimony to the failure of trying to merge elements of socialized medicine with market-based medicine.
Do one, or the other, but don't try to construct some sort of half-assed hybrid system. It will never work. - thespiff, on 01/08/2009, -6/+20How is this any different from the way things are today with private insurance? Oh, right, the way it works today is that if you're too fat to be insurable you don't get insurance. Nobody makes an effort to thin you down and improve your health.
You're right, things are much better the way they already are...
I must defend my right to be fat and stupid! It's the American way! - teamr, on 01/08/2009, -13/+27hell yeah it is. And i'm kinda laughing too because it's eactly whats happening now with smoking. Forget the freedom to kill yourself however you want. Launch a snazzy ad campaign and watch everyone turn against smokers. Well guess what? Fatties, your next. I can't wait for the commercials on how 2nd hand fat is destroying America
- robinthehood, on 01/08/2009, -11/+25thank you. I was wondering WTF that article was getting at. Last time I checked our government wasn't playing big brother and making sure we ate our greens.
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -9/+23I would say "don't ask me to cover your healthcare costs whether you're willing to try something or not."
Tax on fast food and soft drinks? To what end? Do you really believe the government needs more of your money? - mattearle, on 01/08/2009, -3/+16You gotta admire the American health insurance industry for creating advocates who protect their profits by promoting anti socialized health insurance arguments. It's almost as obvious as smoking that it only hurts you to have a company focused on profits administering your health insurance.
- flaknugget, on 01/08/2009, -4/+17Run for the hills MA!!!
Weight counseling for the obese over 40. What's next, drug and alcohol counseling for addicts? What a bunch of Nazis.
Well... Nazis with the longest life expectancy on the planet. - roodammy44, on 01/08/2009, -7/+18It doesn't happen in England.
We have universal health care here and we're not too far after the US in the fatness league.
Doctors here take in all the medical history when diagnosing people as obese and offer help, not enforcing a strict diet.
WTF is this about "enforced re-education".
I don't understand how america got so paranoid about anything remotely like helping each other with universal health care.
If none of you decide to help each other, watch as your country gets sold off to private companies. - Schnelly, on 01/08/2009, -5/+16Some studies in the past have shown that an unhealthy lifestyle, over the course of that persons life, is less expensive to cover than a healthy person's.
Article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22995659/ (You can probably find the entire study if you google)
In short this is due to the fact that, for instance, a smoker is less likely to get Alzheimer's, primarily due to the fact they're more likely to get lung cancer, which has a good chance of killing them within 2 years. Obesity is the same with congestive heart failure. Healthy people, on the other hand, might live with Alzheimer's for 10-15 years, incurring significant medical expenses over those additional 8-13 years that her unhealthy colleagues were spending nothing.
I'm not putting my opinion out here in anyway, just presenting a different, actually substantiated, side of the story.
Now if they started talking eugenics, I'm all for that. - PuterPrsn, on 01/07/2009, -6/+17Really? I would! That would hit people who don't have problems with weight as well as those who do - and why do you want to penalize everyone?
- gerrylazlo, on 01/08/2009, -10/+21Look, I used to smoke, but I didn't for one second think that it didn't affect the people around me. The laws restricting smoking are basically just keeping you from blowing smoke in other peoples faces, more or less. You still have the freedom to kill yourself smoking at home, just not the freedom to bring other people down with you. I don't see any problem with that.
- secrity, on 01/08/2009, -2/+12It started with drugs.
- chrism123, on 01/08/2009, -9/+19These laws are introduced Incrementally. Policies are introduced slowly that seem reasonable such as the taxes in New York on soda or the ban of trans fats until one day controlling people's waistline seems like its not an outrageous sugestion. The other countries in this article didn't develop the policies we see as ridiculous over night as soon as universal healthcare was introduced in their countries.
- samoan27, on 01/08/2009, -0/+10What we need is a giant bilboard that reads "NO FAT CHICKS"
- skintigh, on 01/08/2009, -4/+14ZOMG the sky is falling!
I love how you throw in the false term "socialized medicine" since nothing with medicine will be different under Obama, the only thing that will change is the 40-odd percent of Americans with no health insurance will have the option to get government-backed insurance.
And BTW, a lot of companies already have "waistline police" as this article breathlessly calls them. It's called an incentive to lose weight and save money and usually takes shape in the form of bonuses for gaining or maintaining a healthy BMI. Same goes for smoking.
Sorry to take the wind out of your sails on that one. - regeya, on 01/08/2009, -3/+12FAIL!
I love it. I know people who will defend to death the government's right to keep you from taking water bottles on planes, the government's right to regulate your moral behavior, the government's right to tell you what you can and cannot say, the government's right to spy on citizens, the right of the government to make you a good Christian, and will argue against the press's right to freedom; on the other hand, when "universal healthcare" comes up they spew venom about the evils of big government.
Look. Number one, the story is about Japan. Depending on your age, your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents (the ones who lived through WW2) could have explained the basic problem with the premise here: comparing the United States and Japan is like comparing apples and oranges. It's a very different culture!
Secondly, has anyone seen the Obama plan? It's tepid at best. Under that plan, there's no way the government's going to be measuring your waistline. Why people have to assume the most extreme case when national health comes up is beyond me.
Have you seen the sort of digs the average cardiologist lives in?
I haven't seen Sicko, but to counter an argument made above: Would the world of private medicine really be better, and more just? As horrible as it is to hear that a child can't get chemo if they're not going to survive, is it really better that here in the U.S. we have people dying of easily treatable diseases such as diabetes because they don't have medical insurance (let alone the money to go to the doctor) while we have affluent fatties who cheat congestive heart failure for a few hours while bilking insurance companies for tens of thousands of dollars--costing the rest of us money in the form of increased premiums?
Don't worry, though. Farm subsidies are going away in a couple of years. We'll all get thinner when all the farms close down due to bankruptcy. As you starve, you can take comfort in knowing that government stopped introducing inefficiency into the system, and that you have the freedom to either go broke buying what little food there is, or to starve. - Zippo, on 01/08/2009, -0/+9This is all because obesity is fairly rare in Japan, at least in comparison to the west... and they have a very strict culture.
Meanwhile, here in Canada we have universal healthcare... and plenty of unharrassed fat people. - brstilson, on 01/08/2009, -2/+11That's a pretty sweeping generalization there, chief.
My grandfather died at 89 from Cancer. Until he fell ill a few years before they he never would go to the doctor or take any sort of medication. If it weren't for the cancer he would have easily lived to 100. He was climbing trees in his 80's and even drove us all down to Florida from Michigan, nonstop (it's a 20-hour drive), keeping up with the flow of freeway traffic the entire way.
If you're old and going to the hospital every week and eating medicine like fat people eat M&Ms, you are NOT HEALTHY. When healthy people get old, they STAY THAT WAY, barring some serious illness. Not only are lifespans increasing, but aging is actually being delayed. More and more I see 40-year-olds that look like they're in their early 30s, and 60-year-olds that look 45. I didn't ever see that as a kid. - eugenesucks, on 01/08/2009, -5/+14Because 90% of the US would require diet counselling and Americans don't want to hear that.
- kiwiboyus, on 01/08/2009, -3/+12Please tell us all of your first hand experience of this and what country it happened in, really we'd all love to know.
Bloody paranoid loon. -
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