Arizona to fine poor, fat people

[thejeopardymaze]

 I hate the headline for this article, it asks the question over fining Medicaid patients as though it's a legit question for a moral problem. 

 And other than just punishing people for being fat, face, the low-cal low-fat diets (especially when its low on naturally saturated fats and high on seed oils) never worked anyway. It's also clearly class war, why else would they be on that program other than the fact that they're poor/low income?

Comments

[trouble]

I'm so tired, I can't come up with any response to this beyond "Fuck, where would I get another $50?"

[lisaquestions]

I think I am right there with you.

[silveradept]

It's like what Republicans did to school funding with No Child Left Behind - the more you fail, the less you have in the future to be able to succeed. Someone just finally decided it was a good enough idea to try and apply to other places. Squeeze the poor for all they have, give it to the rich who have enough.

[amadi]

And how do we love that sidebar with the erroneous and misleading bit about money spent on "obesity-related illnesses?" Oh, not at all.

I went into the ER with a cut wrist from a broken glass, and obesity was listed as a "co-diagnosis" (or possibly co-morbidity or "complication") on my chart and thus, statistically, sewing up wrist became "obesity-related health care." Any medical care I get as a deathfatty is classed that way because according to medicine, my fatness pollutes anything that might be wrong with me, and thus are my medical costs classified as well.

[nagasvoice]

You need a different ER, or a different doctor!
Well, we ALL need a different medical system.
Reading the article, it's perfectly clear nobody quoted there knows their arse from their elbow. Nobody mentions how dangerous it is to yoyo your weight down and how it shoots back dangerously up *higher* afterward--that one has numbers like 98% opf all dieters behind it. Selective vision, much?
There's no way to enforce any of the fine system equitably or to prove someone is not abiding by their diet. Fat women get told all the time they're liars when they aren't fabricating their program compliance at all. (After years of yoyoing, they can probably gain weight on two leaves of lettuce and a glass of water, no kidding.)
Then there's the quote from an insurance person that maybe this will encourage doctors to take more time--and just what's driving the lack of time in the first place, may I ask??
Also, the fact that all these so-called diet facts are totally imaginary myths (Scientific American had a series of articles exploding a few of the choicer lies among the "studies prove X or Y!" type headlines.
What would be far more useful would be to fine manufacturers who keep using things like high fructose corn syrup in everything including condiments. OR how about reducing the subsidies that keep it artificially cheap, which it is not anywhere else in the world.

[thejeopardymaze]

Not to mention doing something about the proliferation of bad science, which Gary Taubes does a very good job at writing about. Some of the most interesting interviews with him, I've noticed, are on paleo-friendly podcasts, which I might link to in a future post.

Why the physiology of fat cells doesn't seem to matter to these so-called weight loss and obesity experts, I want to know (and I mean other than ideology and fear of the ending of many careers... hmm, I may have to read Kuhn after all).

-

As for subsidies, I agree, but only as long as the people who make real food, and not corporations, also start getting subsidies and government support. One of the reasons I don't regret not reading progressive magazines like Z anymore is the awful lecturing how higher food prices for safe food are a good thing, and this was/is coming from a supposedly class conscious publication.

[amadi]

Well, it's a standard in the medical system, a patient who is obese, especially someone quite obese, will always have that listed as a complicating factor in most any medical issue. That's how they think. I don't have issue with any doctors for doing what they've been taught in that regard even when it's ridiculous.

What I do dislike is the way that that turns into incorrect information being disseminated by non-medical media reporting.

[thejeopardymaze]

This is part of the reason why I am not without some annoyances with some of the skeptic community, particularly where people with medical degrees discuss these kinds of matters, it's like willing ignorance about how patients are really being treated and mistreated.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate how people like Orac and others speak out against the anti-vaccine people, global warming denialism, and etc, but I've noticed a lot of the appeal of woo can be traced to attitudes people in medicine and medical institutions aren't even aware they have. I'd get more in to detail about it, but I don't have the time.

[paradox_dragon]

"For every dollar spent on health care, 83 cents is spent on a patient who is overweight or obese"

...

God, that is so misleading!


This whole article just makes me angry.