Nanny Statism: Tell People They are Fat! Then What??
Oct 31st 2007RavenIdiOt Lefties & Politics & Raven
Do we really need to develop special “tools” and programs to tell people, and kids, they are…FAT??
Guess so.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - West Virginia is hoping that a little wheel can make a big difference in the state’s obesity problem. The wheel is a body mass index calculator, a low-tech tool that will be distributed to doctors across the state as part of a new effort to get physicians to recognize obesity early in their patients.
The largest provider of Medicaid coverage in the state, the health benefits group UniCare, began offering training Tuesday to doctors and their staffs in obesity prevention and body mass index measurement.
Note the key words: THE STATES PROBLEM WITH OBESITY. Since when is this a states issue?
West Virginia is the third-heaviest state in the nation. According to the state Bureau for Public Health, more than 30 percent of adults in West Virginia are obese. A national study earlier this year by the Trust For America’s Health ranked West Virginia second in the percentage of children who are obese.
Manchin has made improving the health of residents one of his primary goals. The governor has been lobbying federal officials to allow West Virginia to use some of its state Children’s Health Insurance Program money to do obesity screening for children in kindergarten and the second, fifth and eighth grades.
“That way, we can track them across a number of years and measure their progress, and our progress,” Manchin said.
Well that’s nice. What happens after this obesity screening? AND, please note here, the state wants to use money from the S CHIP program to fund this. WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS WITH NO INSURANCE?? The CHIILLDRENN???
It can be hard to tell if a child’s weight is a sign of early obesity or normal growth, said Sondike, who attended the program’s announcement.
“Kids can grow into their weight,” he said. “But if there is a risk of obesity, it’s a lot easier to stop it when they’re children than when they’re adults.”
At the training sessions, doctors will be given calculation wheels along with charts from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help interpret the results.
Sondike said that while many doctors are aware of BMI calculations, one goal of the training is to make physicians think of it as a standard measurement for patients, like weight or blood pressure.
So we don’t really know if the fat kids are really fat. We do know children tend to carry their baby fat well into their teen yrs. Again I ask: What happens after this obesity screening?
For state government, the concern is the health of its residents, but it also a matter of dollars and cents. The state’s Medicaid agency spends about $100 million on obesity-related costs annually, while obesity cost the state Public Employees Health Insurance agency $93 million last year, about 18 percent of its budget.
Yep…and you know what? You can lead a horse to a water pond but you can’t force it to drink. You can tell people, including kids, they are fat but it won’t make them change their eating/exercise habits IF THEY DON’T WANT to change.
Most overweight people KNOW they have a problem…some choose to do something about and others do not. We cannot mandate or force them to follow our ideals of health and wellness.
These programs are a total waste of money.
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