Even the notion that fat people are a drain on the healthcare system is dubious. The notion that 10% of healthcare cost is due to obesity is predicated on the vogue strategy of 'risk management.' In short, if you're fat, you have the disease of being fat. And so they give you pills for it, even though the pills don't make you thin, and even though the pills don't generally prevent you from having heart attacks.
If anything, this strategy of risk management is a drain on the healthcare system. Take me, for example. I could die tomorrow. But there is no history of heart disease on either side of my family. I had a cardio stress test, eight years ago, which was normal. The EKG's I've had since show no change.
But because it's been eight years - and because my total cholesterol tends to be over 200 - even though upwards of 70% of heart attack victims had normal cholesterol readings at the time, nonetheless, my doctor wants me to get another cardio stress test done. Come on, this tests can't be cheap. I'll bet one test costs thousands.
We just don't have an epidemic of having to rush people to hospitals all the time because they're fat. People on both extremes of the curve, the morbidly obese and the overweight, die early. In the very broad middle, the studies are telling us that the people many of us would consider chubby are the healthiest and are living the longest.
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