Fit Brother is Watching
Los Angeles Times: To hold down medical costs, some firms are penalizing workers who are overweight or don’t meet health guidelines.
Boy, do I have mixed feelings about this…
Powered by ScribeFire.
Los Angeles Times: To hold down medical costs, some firms are penalizing workers who are overweight or don’t meet health guidelines.
Boy, do I have mixed feelings about this…
Powered by ScribeFire.
July 29th, 2007 at 5:19 AM
No arguments. I suppose Robert Sawyer’s Frameshift and David Brin’s Earth have sensitized me to the potential fallout of such practices in different ways.
July 29th, 2007 at 7:54 PM
What a bunch of rat bastards. This doesn’t “turn the health care system into a police state” — it turns the workplace into a police state. Where the hell are the Teamsters when we need ’em? Grrrr.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:02 AM
Employers and insurers are on safe territory as long as they just target America’s stand-in niggers: wide loads and smokers. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the insurance companies decide that other lifestyle choices — e.g., unsafe driving, bungee jumping, sky diving, gay sex — also constitute risk factors for longterm health problems.
(Anyone who thinks that’s impossible doesn’t understand the psychology of American capitalism, which exists to preserve freedom for enterprise, not people.)
July 30th, 2007 at 7:43 AM
Being from Indianapolis, I’m familiar with Clarian Health. My dad is (or was as of Thursday) in the Methodist Hospital mentioned in the story, and he certainly has a weight problem.
I heard a guest on NPR saying that capitalism can only be American in nature if it works within the confines of democracy, but it’s been breaking out of it for the past few decades.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:14 AM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6921882.stm
This doctor actually referred to “coloured people!”
July 30th, 2007 at 12:38 PM
Our elections also frequently defy the confines of democracy. I wonder what kind of coverage Katherine Harris has these days?
July 30th, 2007 at 5:40 PM
And of course, it can go beyond financial penalities. Here in Michigan a year or so back, the Weyco Corporation (“an insurance consulting firm” — jeezus!) made itself a prime piece of argumentation for socialism.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/28/60minutes/main990617.shtml
There are many reasons to have national health insurance. It won’t be perfect, but it might stop crap like this.
Or it might make it worse, once someone figures out that cracking down on individual misbehavior can be construed as a budget issue.
Screw ’em. I’m going for a smoke and a box of fried chicken.
July 31st, 2007 at 6:54 AM
Yep, definitely an argument for Canadian-style medicare…which a number of Canadian doctors still, after five decades, apparently have a problem with.
Details on some aspects of that here and here.
July 31st, 2007 at 6:56 AM
Oh, and here, too.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:49 PM
Thanks for the links, Dwight. I really enjoyed this portion, from your first link, which says so much in just a few sentences:
Dr. McMillan said doctors would like the government to look at European models that blend the two systems.
“We are certainly not talking about a private, for-profit system analogous to the United States. Once you make it quite clear you are not talking about that or anything like that, then the temperature comes down and the controversy is a lot less,” he said.
August 6th, 2007 at 2:31 PM
Yeah, the temperature comes down. Until you remember that we don’t live next door to the European Union, nor do we regularly visit there in enough numbers to make a useful comparison between their assorted methods and the USA “standard”. Not even our doctors do that.
And we’ve a number of doctors a bit skeptical about that “European-style” line, too.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:01 PM
It fucking pisses me off, frankly. While a lot of health issues can be handled with proper nutrition and exercise, there are conditions that don’t respond to either, conditions exacerbated by medical treatment (let’s talk about Prednisone’s side effects for a moment…), conditions exacerbated by other medical conditions (i suffer from chronic venous stasis dermatitis, which can put me on my back for extended periods, which does fuck-nothing for my weight.)
Grarrr.
August 8th, 2007 at 4:31 PM
Here’s one or two of those pro-medicare medical professionals’ groups I was talking about:
Canadian Doctors for MedicareIt may well be that the Ontario Nursing Association’s on board as well per this news item.
August 8th, 2007 at 4:42 PM
Conversations with a friend of mine in the biz turn on the difference between statistical norms, which the insurance companies should legitimately track when computing the house odds by which they make their wages, versus normative ideals, which really have nothing to do with actuarial prediction. If I may quote from that conversation: