I cannot find fault with an insurance company that does not want to insure an obese person in the first place.

Sarabeth

From USA Today (which is what sparked this debate):

“Obesity researchers who have long sounded warnings about excess weight were alarmed when a government study suggested that weighing too much may not cost as many lives as previously believed and may actually provide some health advantages.”

I worked in the health insurance industry for five years. I KNOW that this is where they want to take the future. They will allow overweight insureds to happily pay their premiums for years, but then deny them coverage when a major claim comes in.

“Clever” insurance companies haven’t even figured out how to cover self-employed people yet. The system is far more broken than you know.

Laura,
You appear to be someone who really does her research, so I’m not going to debate you on finer points at this time. Three kids get in the way of me getting all my ducks in a row for that!

However, I’m not just a person who watches television for information on scientific research. I was a biological researcher before I had children, and I still keep up with the literature. While you say there is some correlation of disease with obesity I counter to say that there is quite a bit of correllation and the American Heart Association in 1998 made the bold statement that obesity causes heart disease.

The obese, diabetes-ridden Native American population (as well as other populations with similar genetic compositions) is a great example of extremely high correlation of obesity and disease.

I should also point out that the insurance industry used (and still does to some degree) cigarette smokers as a scapegoat, and look how effective that has been on reducing smoking. After all for most of us, controlling our weight and food intake is something we can control. There are not that many genetic anomalies out there who are unable to control their food intake and food choices.

Sincerely,

Sarabeth

There’s a relatively low barrier to entry to forming a non-life insurance company in the United States. Many boutique insurance companies in the U.S. have only a few employees, mostly marketing people. Everything else is outsourced: underwriting, product development, claims processing, call center. I’m sure there are some clever, entrepreneurial insurance executives looking to go their own way who would have caught on to the opportunity of covering the obese, if it really existed.

I would suggest that the reason the media harps on the risks of obesity is that it is the mainstream view, not because of a conspiracy, but because most of the evidence supports it. Whether it’s the 112,000 or the 400,000 figure, that’s a lot of people dying. And that doesn’t include the living one-legged diabetes patients like the woman whose picture was in the NY Times a week or so back, who would be dead in prior decades — if insurance wasn’t paying for her expensive treatment. And the dead also don’t include the obese people who are “alive” getting sponge baths and diaper changes for 24 months longer than the non-obese do at the end of their lives.

To rephrase your blog entry, no matter how much they say it in the 100 blogs in the fat acceptance blogoshpere, it doesn’t make it true.