Shape Up or Pay Out

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Alabama (the state, not the band) has decided to impose higher monthly health insurance premiums on obese state workers to help combat soaring insurance costs resulting from their state’s 30.3% obesity prevelance.

Outside of sighting the overwhelmingly misleading report The Archives of Internal Medicine published this month, WebMD did a suprisingly fair and comprehensive article on the issue.

I’m honestly not sure which side of the debate I fall on just yet. On the one hand, it seems to make perfect sense that obese people should pay higher health insurance premiums. After all, if you are constantly crashing your car, you prove that you are a higher risk on the road and, therefore, you have to pay for it. Likewise, if you are obese and do nothing to try and turn things around, you are putting yourself at a much higher risk for a host of extremely costly and even deadly diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “…the death rate rankings for obesity-related diseases in Alabama are among the highest in the nation. Alabama ranks 6th for heart disease, 9th for stoke, and 10th for diabetes.” Given those statistics, it seems to make perfect sense that those who are creating the extra cost should bear the brunt of the punishment.

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Tags: Controversy
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