I agree with PJ. Medical costs for the obese are not higher. There are many obese who use health services minimally...because they are not needed for services and they are an aggrevation they don't need as well.

Also, the obese are not more lazy than the general population. But if an obese person is lazy it is more noticed and more detrimental.

It's the same with other minorities. My relatives/community told me..."You have to be twice as good to get half as far.".....I've found that to be true. I'm African American. but it's the same for American Indians and Hispanics generally Now add obese to that.

I don't think it's ok to discriminate except for very narrow and specific circumstances related to requirements of the job to be performmed where accommodations can not be made or are an unreasonble cost/burden on the employer/service provider.

To me it's a matter of the respect and dignity every person deserves.

Having worked in Human Resources for over 15 years now, I can tell you that medical costs can get really expensive when employees ignore preventive care - which includes regular annual wellness exams, mammograms, cancer screenings, etc. Waiting until something really hurts or something is really bad, leads to more expensive surgeries, or medications and is potentially life threatening.

If obese people in general are purposely avoiding regular preventive care this could be the correlation. In other words, it isn't the obesity itself that is causing more expensive medical care, but the lack of preventive measures. This could be said about any population. In fact, the statistics for our area show that it is adult males (of all shapes and sizes) that are the least likely to get preventive care and end up getting diagnosed with cancers, diabetes and other diseases that could have been either prevented or treated much sooner before they became severe and life threatening.

In my state of Michigan, it's illegal to discriminate for weight as it is race, sex, etc. Perhaps the only state? Of course, that just means nobody is stupid enough to put in writing that they're not hiring you because you're fat.

Difficulty of breaking a tough addiction aside, a person can basically choose whether or not to smoke or other behaviors like that. But despite what the just-eat-less-and-move-more crowd would like to believe, we don't honestly have complete control over our body sizes. There are genetics and stuff beyond our control just like what makes us the color, gender etc. we are, not just unwise decisions like some want to believe. So discrimination in this regard isn't good. Plus race and gender sometimes drive up average medical costs too but we don't discriminate against those.

Obesity isn't a behavior.

+1

I think that sums it up exactly.

pink, mammograms as are likely to give it to you as find it, do some googling on that. Besides, "using medical services to research whether you are diseased" is not in my book "wellness care and preventative medicine" -- that's an oxymoron for sure.

Wellness care and preventative medicine are eating well, drinking plenty of decent fluids, moving around some, keeping a positive frame of mind, and avoiding all medication like the devil it tends to be. The body tends to be self-healing. People who tend to be healthy don't tend to go to the doctor constantly. That also means they don't go to the disease specialist to see if they have disease. I also did not have the repairman come for my refrigerator because... it wasn't broken. To me these things are related. I think I'm probably just much more in the eastern approach to health than western.

That this body self-healing doesn't seem to happen automatically with obesity might be in part that the body doesn't seem to see obesity as a problem, but as a solution to a greater problem, which I suspect is part of the dilemma of it, really ...

PJ

Totally agree!

I don't think a yearly checkup qualifies as going to the doctor constantly. I view it more as preventive maintenance instead of repair, like people typically do with their cars. You get the oil checked regularly, check the air pressure in your tires, etc.
You don't have to go to disease specialist or participate in disease management until or unless you actually have a disease.



I am not sure what you mean by that, but after losing an aunt to cancer which was detected at a late aggressive stage and watching two friends who discovered their cancers early through preventivr measures and beat their cancers with appropriate treatment, I have to respectfully disagree that preventive care is an oxymoron. I just went through my very own personal experience last week where, had it not been for my annual checkup, I would not have discovered that I had an easily treatable infection that could have become much worse if not treated.

Good arguments and points here. Someone wrote it opens a whole new can of worms and I agree... Just because I wish there would be a ban on babies on airplanes doesn't make it right, LOL and tolerance for other humans with different issues than mine is a good idea all around. I had read somewhere that an airline was going to charge extra for an obese person's seat. Where is the cut off for that? If it was at 300 lbs and the person weighs 301 - it doesn't seem right or fair. Too many variables as to why people are obese and how they are dealing with the issue.
Kat

I would support it if it was well though out and the BMI a little higher than whats indicated. I have been in the position many times of having to do all the leg work for other staff because their wieght created issues with how well they could preform thier job. My husband has also been put into that position . Its not fair to the other workers that are forced to cover for them

I think the insurance companies would have no trouble proving that costs for treating the obese are far greater, on average, than for 'normal-weight' folks. It's not a risk they invented to discriminate against random people.

I don't think this ought to be a factor considered in employment. In fact I believe I have been discriminated against in that regard in the past.

That being said, if insurance companies are going to charge employers more for their group health plans by not discriminating against the obese, some of these employers will take that into consideration when making hiring decisions.

There is a stipulation in federal law related to age that they could, if they choose to, apply to obese workers: "An employer may reduce benefits based on age only if the cost of providing the reduced benefits to older workers is the same as the cost of providing benefits to younger workers." Just substitute "age" with "weight", "older" with "obese" and "younger" with "normal weight" or whatever term you want to use to define "acceptable".
I am not overly fond of the idea, but I hate the idea that, based on costs only, obese people don't deserve to work. People love to speculate that: "42% of Americans will be obese by 2030". Scary, right? Ok, now try, "42% unemployment in America due to inability to find work." Do you think that will help the insurance companies save money? With that kind of unemployment, the economy wouldn't be any healthier than the obese individuals no one wanted to hire.

At 440lbs I was working 10-12 hour days, was considered very good at my job and no one ever had to do any of my work - in fact I often covered for slimmer colleagues who had to have days off due to hangovers, children's illness and one colleague who's cat was sick. I regularly helped other less knowledgeable colleagues leading to my work day being longer. The only other person still working when I left at the end of the day, was a guy who was also very obese, and also very good at his job. He was well liked because he also took time to help colleagues.

Generalising a behaviour to whole group of people is prejudice, pure and simple. An individual is lazy, a group with common physical features is not. I've met plenty of seriously lazy slim people, but do not assume all slim people are lazy. This is the problem with prejudicial stereotypes - work with a slim lazy person, and that person is considered lazy. Work with a lazy fat person and ALL fat people are lazy and unable to deal with work due to obesity.

Lee

Definitely! When there is a prejudice is concerned, the best you can hope for is that you would be considered "an exception to the rule".

Excerpts from: http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html
Individual with a Disability

"An individual with a disability under the ADA is a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, has a record of such impairment, or is regarded as having a disability."

"Major life activities also include the operation of a major bodily function, such as functions of the immune system normal cell growth, brain, neurological, and endocrine functions." (I added the underlines and bold)

A search for endocrine diseases and disorders list will have obesity right on the list. At some point in time, I can't imagine obesity won't be considered a disability that is protected from discrimination under law.

Or, they will pass the extra charge on to their obese employees. This is already happening today. Some companies charge a higher percentage of the health insurance premium to individuals who exceed a certain BMI or have multiple health risk factors. If they reduce their risk factors or BMI to a predetermined level, their premiums reduce. They do the same thing for smokers vs. non-smokers too.