From reason to ridiculous.

These are the types of questions that ARE asked and ARE taken into consideration in under written states, which most of the country is. The are called riders that won't be covered. Conn is pretty bad for them.
Biggest one that affects your health insurance in under written states (take physical, based on results, they decide how much it costs from person to person), motorcycle riding is a huge mark up. They run a DMV check so you can't lie.
At least here in Mass as a guaranteed issue state, we can all get it, no pre-exisiting condition worries, regardless of what it costs. The problem is in the other states that aren't where people CAN'T get insured due to such issues discussed above, no matter how much they are willing to pay. Sucks paying so much for something you may or may not ever use, but you'll thank god you have it when you do need it.

I need health care. I got none.

Ridiculous?

So where do you draw the line? You still haven't really answered it.
Since you feel higher risk people should pay more, how do you classify “high risk’ people? (And not just fat ones or one who smoke). Someone who goes out every day without sunscreen is at high risk for Skin Cancer. Someone who has a lot of unprotected sex has high risk for a lot of things and it goes on and on. Someone who has a lot on stress and anxiety has high risks for cardiovascular issues. Where do you draw the line? I don't think you can………..

Yup, ever been in a VA,State or County Hospital?
I wouldn't send my dog.

And like I've asked multiple times, why should I pay the same rates as these people who will statistically have significantly higher health care related costs than I will over my lifetime:
http://www.nsma.org.au/pics2008/fatgirl.jpg
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-conten...07/02/fat1.jpg

What you are arguing is a liberal's dream - the many healthy people paying for the few sick people with no ability to discriminate and charge people relative to their use.

JD's former girlfriends gathered for a reunion recently....

Because JD, it would be profiling, discriminatory and not PC. :hihi:

Nice pics. I’d bet they don’t (or didn’t) have insurance in the first place.

Read my previous posts,

I think you are getting confused as there are 2 things here
#1 is Government "dictated" healthcare, #2 is identifying people with high risk health coverage.

I'm not a liberal (far from it) and not arguing a liberal's dream. I don't want to pay the same rate as a smoker. I don't think government should tell people what they can or can't do. I don't think the government should be involved in Healthcare. I don't think someone should be paying for health coverage for another free loader (unless it is an elderly retired person who has worked their whole life and is on a fixed income or similar scenario). I'm talking about the people who feel they are entitled to it. I think one should get an education/skill, work hard and pay your insurance premiums. My question is once that is established, where do you draw the line on identifying a "high risk" person? Also, another way to look at this is if your friends in these pictures die of a heart attack at 40 then no more healthcare is need for them but if you live to be 90 then there is 50 more years of health related expense that will have to be paid for your care.

My opinion is the government needs to stay out. If a private insurance company in a free market wants to add to premiums for people who abuse themselves then so be it (still not sure where they would draw the line). But in a free market, they will have to compete with other insurance companies and major employers will be able to negotiate those premiums.

And why do I have more posts on this site about non-fishing related stuff? :confused:

We are much closer than it appears. I agree the government should stay out. What I've been stating above, and I thought I was clearer, is that the private insurance companies should be applying these surcharges. The government needs to get the hell out of it.

Private companies and institutions (who provide private health insurance) can make decisions without Government involvement. My wife is an HR manager for one of the largest companies in the world (over 300,000 employees world wide) and they will have 100% tobacco free campuses by the end of 2011. This was a decision made privately and not by any government. No smoking will be allowed at any of their sites across the world. You can’t use tobacco in your car or while on company property. Her company’s stance is, if you don't like it, you don't have to work here. This was a big deal and particularly big issue with factory workers as they can not get off the property to smoke and be back before their break is over.

That is one of the ways they are trying to urge employees to quit to help reduce Insurance costs

This is that part that there may not be a black/white answer to. Is it just the smokers and fat people in your picture album :) ? Not to be a broken record but what about everyone else: Drinkers, Non-Sun Screen users, heavy labor intensive jobs, modercycle riders, sky jumpers, skiiers, shore fisherman who swim out to remote rocks at night, etc, etc. Where is the line in the sand on who pays higher and where does it end?

The reason the govern. stepped in originally is b/c there is no incentive for a private business to cover someone that the business will lose money on. I'm guessing that someone with 1 incident of cancer will have a much higher chance of a repeat. The insur. company cannot make enough money on that one person w/o charging a higher rate. Then your going to have sickness/illness that are so expense that if you have it once and are likely of getting it again, no ins. company will cover you. Now you have someone w/no insur. and when they get sick again, they can't pay the bills. Thus, you have guaranteed issue which spreads the cost of JohnnyD's fat people amongst all of us fit, healthy people.

Insur. comp. can deal with guaranteed issue if everyone in the state is required to have coverage. Without people being able to pick and choose if they want coverage, the ins. comp. can't spread the risk amongt all of us. With guarantee issue you don't have to do risk assessment for smokers or fatties - you spread the risk amongst all of us.

this should fix everything...


BALTIMORE -- The Baltimore City Health Department issued its first environmental citation for repeat violations of the city's trans fat ban.

The Health Department issued Healthy Choice, a food facility in the 400 block of Lexington Street, a $100 fine on Thursday.

"It was the second time they were found with a high trans fat level in their ingredients," said Health Department agent Juan Gutierrez.

Officials said that during inspections in July and this month, the facility was found to be using a margarine product with trans fat levels in excess of what the law allows.

The law banning food facilities from serving or selling non-prepackaged food items containing 0.5 grams or more of trans fats went into effect in September 2009.

"While we are pleased with the high rates of compliance we've seen since the ban took effect, we will continue to sanction businesses that repeatedly fail to comply."
- Dr. Oxiris Barbot, Commissioner of Health

"They originally had a margarine that was above 3 grams, actually, which is very high compared to the .5 that is allowed. Then when we came back and they had replaced it, they replaced it with one that was 2 grams, so it still was too high," Gutierrez said

If that was the reason the Govt stepped in, then why a 3000 page
bill that covers everybody?

Why not a special program or tax credit for those individuals?

They stepped in to take complete control of HC and increase their
power base.

You would approve of special bill to cover certain individuals?

Why do you think the government has passed bills pertaining to health care for the last 60 or 70 years? There were bills proposed/passed by both parties in that time.

Good. Smokers are less productive in the workplace and are sicker more often.

This is a few years dated but:
Now tack on that insurance companies offer businesses discounts on health insurance if they don't hire smokers and it's even better of a financial decision for businesses.

This is no different than delivery companies that won't hire people with a bad driving record - I don't and we get reduced vehicle insurance rates because of it.

redlite knows the insurance industry and brought up a good point - the questions you're asking are already being addressed by these companies when decided if they will provide coverage. They make the decision based on how risky you are. My opinion is for them to take it one step further and either provide me a kick-back for being a healthy person or create a surcharge for those who don't.

You want me to draw a line in the sand, then fine - Obesity and smoking - the two biggest causes of preventable deaths in America and two of the most expensive. Done. The line is drawn.

I Googled it so not sure if it is 100% true:

Deaths and Mortality
(Data are for the U.S.)
•Number of deaths: 2,423,712
•Death rate: 803.6 deaths per 100,000 population
•Life expectancy: 77.9 years
•Infant Mortality rate: 6.75 deaths per 1,000 live births

•Heart disease: 616,067
•Cancer: 562,875
•Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 135,952
•Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 127,924
•Accidents (unintentional injuries): 123,706
•Alzheimer's disease: 74,632
•Diabetes: 71,382
•Influenza and Pneumonia: 52,717
•Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis (kidney disease): 46,448
•Septicemia (infections: 34,828

What search terms did you use?

I'm talking preventable deaths. Deaths where an intervention or change in lifestyle could have prevented it.

This chart comes from a medical journal published in 2000:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...s_of_death.png
http://proxychi.baremetal.com/csdp.o...earch/1238.pdf

good thing we have a fat First Lady and chainsmoking President for role models :uhuh: and they are REALLY expensive...

Great post. Don't forget about how we got to this mess. Ted Kennedy was another healthy role model responsible for this. "Do as I say, not as I do"

incomplete thought though...meant to say how lucky we are to have these two who like to lecture us on such things...pretty sure Michelle was caught choking down a cheeseburger and fries recently...I think it was Teds dream that JD help pay for his and all fat people's medical needs...it takes a village you know..

It's already being done for the blind by tax credit.

I'd rather see tax credits to help uninsured individuals to help pay for their HC through private plans rather than completely changing HC for 3o8 million people.

We still don't know how many people don't have HC with estimates ranging
from 20 to 40 million.

Start cutting give a way programs and use the 640 Billion they claim will
be saved from Medicare fraud to make up the loss of tax income.

Obama- care, as seen in recent days, is opening Pandora's box for companies to drop their employees private HC.

this should help too...400 million/year for "FOOD DESERTS" NOT "DESSERTS"

Mrs. Obama’s multi-million dollar anti-obesity initiative seeks to eradicate so-called food deserts. “Right now, 23.5 million Americans, including 6.5 million kids, live in what we call ‘food deserts’—these are areas without a supermarket,” Obama explained in May. “And as a result these families wind up buying their groceries at the local gas station or convenience store, places that offer few, if any, healthy options.” According to Obama, these “food deserts” lead to increased levels of obesity.



“We’re creating a Healthy Food Financing Initiative that’s going to invest $400 million a year—and leverage hundreds of millions more from the private sector—to bring grocery stores to under-served areas and help places like convenience stores carry healthier options,” she announced.

But Jeffrey wonders if the situation is as dire as Mrs. Obama describes it and whether this new financing initiative is warranted. Pointing to a 2008 government study of “food deserts,” Jeffrey concludes the First Lady’s characterization of American “food deserts” is “fatuous at best.”

Lower-income Americans live closer to supermarkets than higher-income Americans.

“Overall, median distance to the nearest supermarket is 0.85 miles,” said the Agriculture Department report. “Median distance for low-income individuals is about 0.1 of a mile less than for those with higher income, and a greater share of low-income individuals (61.8 percent) have high or medium access to supermarkets than those with higher income (56.1 percent).”


There are 23.5 million people who live in “low income” areas that are more than a mile from the nearest supermarket. But more than half of these people are not low-income, and almost everyone in these areas–93.3 percent—drive their cars to the supermarket. On average, they spend 4.5 minutes more than the typical American traveling to the supermarket.

“Area-based measures of access show that 23.5 million people live in low-income areas (areas where more than 40 percent of the population has income at or below 200 percent of federal poverty thresholds) that are more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store,” said the report. “However, not all of these 23.5 million people have low income.

“If estimates are restricted to consider only low-income people in low-income areas, then 11.5 million people, or 4.1 percent of the total U.S. population, live in low-income areas more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery store,” it says. “Data on time use and travel mode show that people living in low-income areas with limited access spend significantly more time (19.5 minutes) traveling to a grocery store than the national average (15 minutes).

“However,” says the report, “93 percent of those who live in low-income areas with limited access traveled to the grocery store in a vehicle they or another household member drove.”

Only 0.1 percent—one-tenth of one percent—of Americans living in low-income areas more than 1 mile from a supermarket took public transit to the store, the report said.


It’s for this “one-tenth of one percent” of American living in low-income areas that First Lady Michelle Obama says U.S. taxpayers need to invest $400 million every year. Is it worth it? You be the judge

Maybe if they walked the "Extra Mile" to the Supermarket there wouldn't be an Obesity problem.......

So now they want to start controlling our food supply as to where
food markets should be and what foods they will need to carry?

Why shouldn't we just pay super markets to deliver food to their house.
After all it does take them an extra 4.5 Min's to get their food.

Funnie though, in Calif., some how, soom seem to find the time to get to Vegas and cash in their monthly welfare cards.

I like TDF's idea. :)
And don't forget to wear your mittens.

I believe it was Las Vegas and International cruise ships where the welfare debit cards were being used :confused: Nancy Pelosi would tell you that's economic stimulus...

Grow a garden, I know it would require someone to actually do something but it'cheap to do and health food for you. :huh:

We need to fight Obesity.....so lets make it easier for people to get food. Trying to grasp the logic in that

Think again Dems.....................I guess we can toss out the theory to add extra tax to junk food's:


(CNN) – Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts. For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too. His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food. The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months. … His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds. But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so. Haub’s “bad” cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his “good” cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.

How's his glucose levels.....N/A

This is nonsense.

"Haub said before the diet, he was eating up to 3,000 calories a day and weighed 201 pounds."

And then "he has lost 27 pounds in two months eating approximately 1,800 calories a day – and those calories came from foods like snack cakes, candy bars and even potato chips – basically anything he could get from a vending machine."

Anyone who removes 1200 calories from their diet is going to lose weight. This does not mean it is healthy.
This quote sums it up well:

Yea, funny they didn't mention anything about that............

No that guy really lost the weight. He conditioned himself to eat one piece every 3 hours whether he was hungry or not. So every 3 hours you eat a pack of twinkies. Yea you'd drop weight quick but I'm betting your body is in poor shape.

Food deserts??? This is just an extension of welfare. 400 mill? Who gets that? Are we going to give tax breaks to stores to build in unprofitable areas? Just when you think it can't get any crazier. The good thing is the new House will never fund it. Thank you Tea Party

they might sneak it in under the wire....like this


FLOTUS’ $4.5 Billion School Lunch Bill Could Get Lame Duck Passage

November 10, 2010

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama’s campaign for healthier school lunches could be revived in Congress after two key Democrats said they will drop opposition to using funding from food stamps to pay for it.

Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts have said they will support House passage of a $4.5 billion child nutrition bill that passed the Senate earlier this year. Backed by some anti-hunger groups, the two lawmakers led opposition to passage of that version before the election because it is partially paid for with $2.2 billion taken from future funding for food stamp programs.

If it wasn't for the Tea Party, there'd be at least one or two more Republicans in Congress. Nice concept, poor political strategy.

that's the dumbest thing you've said in a long time :uhuh:

No it isn't.

it was a tough call, one of the dumbest :uhuh:

if it wasn't for the Tea Party, their organization, dedication and energy the historic proportions of the turn over at every level( YOU NEED TO LOOK CLOSELY AT THE STATE LEVEL TURN OVER) may not have happened....starting with Scott Brown, to suggest that losses by Tea Party "backed" candidates are the fault or result of some shortcoming in the Tea Party is just rediculous...more likely a shortcoming of the Republican party establishment for not fully supporting the primary winner and reluctant, entrenched elitists that don't know when it's time to go...see Murkowski, those that lost were left out on their own in many cases and heavily targeted by the dems...how many trips did Barry and Biden make to Deleware despite the polls? and look at the apparatus that was deployed to Nevada to save Harry's ass...the Tea Party was a huge net plus in an historic sweep...