The host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher also suggested that Democrats should target the issue during the upcoming debates.
decider.com
I have every reason to believe the private insurance industry would like to drop obese people from health care, and there are going to be people who will want to put barriers to health care for obese people in any kind of universal health care system.
This is both a danger to obese people and the opposite of a pro-active or cost saving approach.
There are several fallacies operating here. The first one is that fat people don’t know their own minds, and have to be told they’re unwelcome in society. There isn’t a fat person alive who hasn’t gotten this message repeatedly. It is stigma for the sake of stigma. It’s not concern for the fat person, but about the ego of the thin one. “At least I’m not fat like you.”
The second fallacy is that weight loss is a matter of willpower and that we know how to achieve it, a simple formula of energy balance that can be applied to every dieter. This isn’t always true. If it works for you, more power to you.
But a lot of fat people have endocrine disorders, lipidema, or other diseases that actually require medical care. (I’ve had PCOS and diabetes.) How is it going to help these people or even save money to deny them medical care? They will struggle with their weight, fail, and wind up in the ER with serious complications from untreated illness. This still happens because many people still don’t have insurance and can’t afford prescriptions like insulin. They aren’t taught in our current healthcare system about why carbohydrates are a problem for diabetics and they may not have enough access to healthy food. There is actually a lot of food insecurity and poverty in the U.S.
The third fallacy is the denial of humanity and dignity to the obese, women especially, which sets many women on the path of disordered eating, such as anorexia or bulimia, and then this is upheld as a role model to follow. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been praised for weight loss when the cause was serious illness. When we reduce the value of a woman’s life to her weight, no woman’s life is valued. Much less her health.
We know diets don’t work for long term weight loss and bariatric surgery is contraindicated for many people. It also has a mortality rate and can cause serious side effects. Nutritional research seems to contradict itself every year. It’s clear more research is needed. But the science doesn’t get to the patients. We get the same advice we were getting thirty years ago, and set people up to fail.
This isn’t science. It’s politics. And this is why there’s a fat acceptance movement. We can’t seem to get off the stigma merry-go-round and do science. It’s because the money and misogyny are in stigma.
