While most of Washington is waiting around, nervously chewing on its
fingernails in anticipation of the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision
(may I have the envelope, please), there are some who are still in the
fight. As Melissa Healy writes in the Los Angeles Times:
a federal health advisory panel on Monday recommended that all obese adults receive intensive counseling in an effort to rein in a growing health crisis in America.
That too many Americans weigh far too much is
indisputable. That they need counseling in order to find out why they
are fat and what they can do about it ... well, less so. One suspects
that most overweight people have heard the old mantra of "eat less;
exercise more." Why, one wonders, should it require "intensive"
counseling to get this message across? Is it that hard to understand?
And, then, there is the question of costs and who pays them. As Ms. Healy reports:
Few private health insurers now reimburse physicians for weight-loss counseling or pay for programs that patients seek out on their own.
And worse:
A growing number, in fact, charge obese patients more for coverage — a policy that some public health officials have denounced as punitive and ineffective.
People who are at risk, because of their own
behavior, paying higher insurance premiums. Why the sheer, brutalizing,
inhumanity of it.
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