Your puerile statements demonstrate your inability to understand. There is no assumption that all fat people want others to pay for their healthcare, especially since I wouldn't have thought every fat person would be opposed to paying more due to being fat. Just as there is no assumption that fat people are poor.

The 'assumptions' I'm making are that 1) if you eat more, you'll be fatter than if you eat less; 2) You are more likely to suffer health problems the fatter you get; and 3) The costs of healthcare will increase if you are suffering more health problems.

Paladin seems to dispute the first 2 of these, which are you disputing?

Healthcare they will likely need is determined by their illnesses. These illnesses are usually issues the older they get. So would it not also be true that age plays a factor? As people get older the more healthcare they need. For example at 21 I did not need any healthcare. But now that I am into 50’s I need more healthcare. So you are paying for my age related illnesses. We should then by your logic have and age tax or stop treating people over 40 because that is the tipping point. Also people that have risky behavior should be taxed. Gay people, sexually promiscuous people, people that ride bikes, or drive cars, or drink or smoke. Should be taxed at a higher rate that do what the government says is bad for you. Eating salt, can lead to hypertension and heart disease, drinking coffee can reduce your risk of some cancers but lead to dehydration which causes other health issues such as urinary tract infections. Since UHC will be the single payer for all healthcare they will determine what people will be treated based on their so called risky lifestyle. That is how it is done in other countries with UHC. They cut out the middle man (insurance) and just tell you that because you don’t live their version of a healthy lifestyle you don’t get treated for things they disapprove of.

So the fat person is subsidizing the drinker, the smoker, the drug abuser, the skydiver, the scuba diver, the motorcycle rider and more. Is that fair? You see the only time you are paying for someone else is when you have UHC, Insurance companies charge for risky lifestyles if they know about it. What do we do with the people that lie to the insurance company? You can see a fat person is fat but you can’t tell if a person is a drug abuser until they are in the hospital already collecting on benefits the insurance company did not know about. Is that fair to the rest of us? Why should a fat person pay for everyone else that lives a risky lifestyle plus pay a fat tax. Did you know that if you take blood pressure medication your insurance goes up? So taking meds to keep you healthy costs more than suddenly getting ill because you did not take them. Even though pain medication is cheep you pay more if you are on pain management than if you buy drugs on the street to fix your pain. Why pick on fat people unless you just like to discriminate and fat people like smokers are the flavor of the month. Who is next?

You're using those points to justify making someone else's healthcare your business.  That's what I'm disputing.  There was opposition to Medicare in 1964 for a reason; you are an example of what those opponents foresaw - that surrendering autonomy for security will result in a tyranny of elites and that security will eventually prove to be false & hollow.

not at all, I am disputing that it is the case with every fat person. If you have a medical condition your weight goes up, they are just as fat as the person that does not have a medical condition. How can YOU tell the difference? Why should that person pay a fat tax if they did not eat bad foods, or over eat? You assume that a person is fat only because they don't eat right and should pay a tax for it.

You just assumed that fat people would want to pay more for being fat and call them a hypocrite if they don't want to pay more. I am not fat and I don't think it is fair for them to pay extra because they are fat.

Hold on, you're saying I'm assuming that they won't want to pay more, and I'm also assuming that they will want to pay more?! Make up your mind! Either way though I'm making no assumptions about fat people's preferences over being charged a fair amount. As for the hypocrisy, you appear to be using your selective memory again. Hypocrisy is typically where you say A but do B. That doesn't mean that saying A by itself is hypocritical, just as doing B by itself is hypocritical. Read back and you should be able to find the 'B' to go with the 'A'.

Well you can't choose to grow old, or get younger again, so for a universal healthcare system that would raise obvious moral issues, especially when you factor in that many old people who have retired will be on a lower income and hence wouldn't be able to pay any such tax as easily, and UHC will be funded by taxation which itself is based on ability to pay.

In a (private) insurance system however it makes every sense to allow companies to charge based on age. Companies are afterall profit making, and to prevent them charging on age could effectively mean they end up having to provide insurance to the elderly at a loss, and/or refusing to provide insurance for that reason, and/or heavily overcharging the young if they have to provide insurance to the elderly and can't charge more.

Actually I'm effectively using those points to justify no longer making someone else's healthcare my business with an insurance system, since a fat surcharge would mean I'd no longer be subsidising fat people and hence it wouldn't be my business. Without allowing any such surcharge though I'm going to lose out based on other people's healthcare and hence I'll take more of an interest in it (such as supporting government programmes to restrict peoples ability to choose to be fat). With the tax/surcharge, I shouldn't care whether people choose to get fat or not because it won't affect me.

Okay, I will try one more time. In other countries the healthcare you receive under UHC is determined by your age and your productivity. If you are old you do not get a knee replacement or a heart transplant. What they do suggest is end of life care or euthanasia. You had a good life make way for the next generation. So in those countries your age tax is paid with your life. There are people in the administration that want to limit care for the young until they reach a viable age such as five, until then your child is too risky to waste funds on. The optimum ages for full healthcare is 15 to 35 and then your care starts to decline. Anyone see Logons Run?  

I would very much like to see where you get your data on this.

Fail.  That only applies if you are forced to buy health insurance.  Furthermore, a few simple changes in existing laws & regulations would allow you to buy less expensive insurance tailored to you, what you feel you need and what you want - we don't need a complete federal takeover of healthcare to achieve that.  You'll have fewer choices once that happens.  If you really are 'healthier' and really are living a 'healthier' lifestyle and believe you should be rewarded for that, the market will provide it, given the opportunity.

Just to be clear, the health risks associated with obesity are undisputed - I spend a large amount of my time counseling patients on that very subject.  I have no objection to non-punitive 'incentives' to encourage 'healthy lifestyles' and weight reduction, as well as obesity prevention.  People need to understand on an individual level how obesity places their future health at risk.  Unfortunately, there is no lifestyle that immunizes someone against health problems.  And association is not the same as causation, a trap we fall into all too easily, especially the lay (some prefer 'lazy') media.

The market can, when allowed, provide such incentives (it's derisively called cherry-picking), but I don't think people would accept the inevitable consequence of that approach - an auto-insurance style system where you get sick, your premiums go up.  So if you're skinny & you want to avoid 'paying for someone else's obesity,' it can be done - just pray you don't get sick from any of the thousands of serious conditions unrelated to being overweight.  And hope that it doesn't encourage an epidemic of anorexia & bulimia.

Personally, I'm willing to pay a little more up front to avoid the auto-insurance approach to healthcare.

On what, health risks associated with obesity? I've already given you a link to some data. If you're referring to the subsidisation effect, it's a result of simple economics/logic and there are numerous examples out there of such situations.

Fail. It applies both if you're forced to buy health insurance and also if it's your choice whether to buy health insurance. The effects may be more pronounced with a forced system, but they still exist in an unforced one.

That's the beauty of the market, if people wouldn't accept that consequence, then it wouldn't happen. People would instead look to purchase insurance which wouldn't change in cost for a set period regardless of their health. You yourself effectively evidence this in your later statement:

If you don't want to pay for someone else being fat, you don't have to with the market system you seem to believe would 'work' if enough people wanted it to.  But the 'fat' wouldn't have any insurance at all if risk couldn't be spread.  Sounds like a liberal, compassionate idea to me.

Despite your denial, it is a moot point when insurance is voluntary - you don't have to pay for anyone else if you decide, in your wisdom, that the premiums being charged are in any way helping to pay for anyone else's health care.  Don't buy it, and self-insure.

And where did you pull that statement from? All that would happen is the insurance would cost them more, not that it wouldn't exist at all. Perhaps you should read up on the basics of risk+reward - just because something becomes riskier, it doesn't mean you don't want it, it just means you require a greater reward.

But if you want insurance, you are forced to pay for others.

As for self insurance, it doesn't work. Given the potentially huge costs of health care should you suffer a particular ailment, even if you saved 100% of your salary you wouldn't be able to cover such eventualities for a while, and even after many years of saving you would still only be able to cover the 'lesser' health risks and not the very severe (but less likely) ones effectively.

Hello?!?!  It's... insurance.

You still don't get it.  As long as there is no coercion involved and insurance companies are permitted to offer a wider range of options more closely tailored to your needs, you should be happy.

D, this one is a hater, does not understand the concept of insurance and will only be happy when we are all paying for is problems while he complains about paying for fat people.

Yes, you really are an idiot.

Come back when you actually know what insurance is, and preferably also how it works, and maybe you might have a chance of understanding. Given the pitiful reasoning you've shown this far I doubt it though.

Why should I be happy if I'm having to pay for fat people?

Why should I be happy if I'm having to pay for you, fat or not?  You can solve your 'moral dilemma' by not buying insurance and paying cash - that way you're guaranteed to be paying only for yourself.

Because he wants UHC to pay his bills, and nothing else will do for him. It is okay if we pay for him as I pointed out earlier but he should not have to pay for others unless we all chip in. You are correct D, self insurance is the way to go but I doubt he ever thought of that.

The problem with copying and pasting my arguments against you and trying to use them against me is that they don't apply. You are the one arguing that UHC is evil because it means you have to pay for others, yet argue in favour of non-fat people being forced to pay for fat people if they want insurance.

You really are hopelessly out of touch with reality if you think people can effectively self-insure for healthcare.

That doesn't solve it, since that means I don't have insurance. It can be solved by letting insurance companies charge fat people more.

My healthcare cost me 60 a month. Where is it that I am paying for fat people?  That is medical, dental, and vision. UHC will cost everyone roughly 40% to 60% of our income. Tell me how it is cheaper? Even the Canadian healthcare beign as generous as the proponants want to be cost them between 15% nad 20% of their income to pay for a lousy system. I see nothing that works as good as the system we have now.

okay dip stick, if people opt out of medical insurance the price has to come down to a rate the market will pay. Priceses will continue to go up because insurance companies will pay rather than the individual. Lawyars cause the prices to skyrocket because if every test under the sun is not done then the doc can be sued for not doing the tests. Malpractice inusrance cost 60% of your doctors visit. I just love the sliding scale used by doctors. If the insurance companies pay the doctor charges 475 a visit with the patient paying 20 dollars. when I don't have coverage the doctor charges me 179 for the same treatment.

your argument is that you need insurance to pay for your medical bills. but if you pay cash you pay less. If everyone pays cash the cost will have to come down or the doctors won't get paid. If they do tort reform the cost will drop even further.

Your misguided belief in the need for insurance ensurs the cost stays high and will only go up.

Supported by the fact that other countries (with UHC)'s healthcare spending is far lower than the US's (per person)...

Well done for demonstrating your complete lack of understanding of how insurance works.

Sure they do; they ration the care so only the people in productive age groups get the care so yes, they spend less as a nation per person served. the young healthy people don't require much care. you don't heal the healthy. On the other hand you do not heal the sick. a 60 year old with cancer does not get the care we receive in America. Mortality rates for cancer (expensive treatment) is higher in all those countries. people reduced to self medication because it takes so long to get treated the illness is beyond fixing by the time the cancer is found. As my girlfriend said to me, you get a choice between the two systems. good care or economical care. good care costs money. economical care costs lives. I went in for a checkup in the middle of July, they found something that looked suspicious, since then I have had a biopsy to confirm cancer, a bone scan to see if it spread, a soft tissue scan to see if it spread there, a series cardiac tests to see if I can survive the surgery, now I am waiting for scheduling to tell me the dated of my robotic surgery. All of that and it has not been a month since my doc found something suspicious. In countries with UHC if the doc found something that did not look right it would take 3 to 6 months to get the biopsy. by then it could have spread to other parts and made the cure rate more difficult. it could take another two years to find out if it spread to my bones and soft tissue. Yes, it would be cheaper but I would be incurable by then since my cancer is agressive. I will pay the thousand dollar deductable and get the surgery before the end of the year and still be here. At 53 I might not have been elegable under UHC to get the surgery. Due to the laws as they stand now, once a doctor is treating you they have to treat you regardless of your ability to pay. under UHC that goes out the window because the government decides if you are worth spending the money.

Actually I was pointing out how to fix health care to reduce costs but you could not grasp that. Sorry if I wrote on a level above your ability to comprehend. It is real basic, business makes a profit based on the consumers ability to pay. Price it too high and you don't make money. if a carwash cost a thousand dollars few people would pay for it and the carwash goes out of business. Put the insurance company in the mix with the government mandating that it must wash cars in a certain way and the price goes up because no matter what the cost it will be paid.  Put medical care back into the free market and the price will come down. Is that easier for you to understand?

You just can't help continuing to make a fool of yourself, can you? Insurance does not work like car washes. Again, it's all about risk.

By the way, here's someone else bashing the fat:

http://www2.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jmackey/2009/08/14/health-care-reform-full-article/

Foul liberal scum, talking about how many of the healthcare problems are caused from obesity. He just wants UHC so everyone else can pay for his healthcare.

Yes, it is about risk, it is also about what the market will stand. The risk of you getting cancer from drinking water is low in America but high in other countries where they don't have good water. So if a person from the Philippines comes here to live they have a higher risk of cancer but that risk is not something the insurance companies look at. The risk of a fat person getting sick is higher than a normal sized person but lower than a very thin person. Why is it that we don’t have a tax on the thin? The health risks are the same for both fat and thin but we are only picking on the fat. Is that fair to you? Black people have higher rates of heart disease and high blood pressure that leads to strokes. Should we charge extra to insure a black person? You seem happy to pick on fat people for now but just remember that as soon as we allow this all the other groups that have high risk factors come into play, gays, and blacks to get started. They already charge more for smokers, and people who take antidepressants, where does it stop? It stops when people stop getting insurance and self insure. It stops when doctors stop taking insurance. I know a few that have stopped already. They charge less for a visit to them because they get paid in cash and don’t have to wait for the insurance company to pay them.

Uh, no - his op-ed article was against UHC.  You must have just assumed that, in an 'instant.'

Its that reading comprehenson thng, When one is  blind to facts everything they read goes their way if there is a hink that it might. Notice how he edited the article down to just what he believed it should mean and say. Going out of context like most liberals do. That is why I ignored that part of it because if he is quoting it in this way he is either lieing to himself or he is trying to mislead us by chaning the context of the article. Mayvbe he was hoping that we would not read it and just assume that was all it said. Either way he is not trustworthy on this issue. Or maybe he got it off a liberal site and did not read the article himself.

It's funny enough when one person makes a complete fool of themself, but when two people do it independently, with neither of them realising, it's hilarious!