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Judge it!
Well, that is a VERY good lifestyle.
But, most of us don't have the wherewithal to accomplish it. How much more expensive is it to follow the diet plan that you have instituted? Don't tell me anything about how the benefits outweigh the costs and all that sort of thing. While it's actually true, it's also true that if you don't have the money, you simply don't have the money.
There is NO excuse, however for the program of enforced laziness with which most of us (myself, to some degree) conduct our lives.
I have always maintained that if you sit around in your free time, eating greasy meatball subs and drinking beer, you don't deserve to have an insurance program at all and your employer shouldn't be expected to provide one, and that goes double for family members. WHY should an employer feel obligated to pay for their employee's family's bad lifestyle???
'Lifestyle' vs. 'health' insurance
I was encouraged to read Dr. Stan Sutjka's "My Word" column, "Unspoken Reasons for Health-Care Reform Failure." As one of the many Americans who choose to forgo "health" insurance, I'm happy to see that others ...
Full Story: Orlando Sentinel
Full Story: Orlando Sentinel
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I agree with a lot of things you said but there are some issues. First off I wouldn't walk or ride a bike anywhere in this state--the drivers are Crazy!! It is more dangerous to our health to get run over than to get fat. Also not all fat people are that way by choice some eat right and exercise as they are able and continue to struggle with weight. Maybe health insurance plans need to help those people with weight loss plans.
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Tom O'Hanlon shows his gross ignorance in this smug, holier-than-thou article. Who will pay his hospital bill when he gets run over on his bicycle riding on errands? Does he have a million or so set aside for that? What if he comes down with cancer? Liver failure? Remember that Jim Fixx died of a heart attack. Can't get much healthier than a habitual runner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Fixx I work with two fine healthy gentlemen that bike to work here in downtown Orlando. Both have been hit and seriously injured while riding for exercise. Thankfully our ridiculously expensive "lifestyle" insurance plan covered their hospital bills. Many thanks to our employer that bears most of the cost of the insurance for us. Eat all the healthy food you want, exercise all you want.....but you cannot outrun or out-bike genetics. Quite frankly I feel that Mr. O'Hanlon's prejudice against fat people is showing. It sickens me. I feel sadness for his wife and children, for I am sure that he forces them into his mold for perfection whether they enjoy it or not. Good health is a gift from God that is yours each day you wake up healthy. Enjoy it while it is here, it will not last forever. |
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Then just ride a stationary bike while you read a book or watch TV. Do not look for excuses, there are no valid ones. |
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You can be thin, muscular, exercise regularly, and have just come from your doctor where he exptessed that he "has never seen a more healthy person than you in his entire practicing career" and drop face down on the sidewalk from an aneurism, stroke, heart attack etc. and be be ridden, paralyzed, unable to speak or do anything for yourself and your entire estate will have to be spent, losing your home, any savings, etc. and end up in a Medicaid care home { that you don't want to even see much less stay in one } and then you beomce a burdent to all the rest of us who end up paying for your stupidity and folly in believing you were some sort of modern health miracle.
You live now by the grace of God healthy. As the previous comment writers have said, that can be wiped out in an instant by a careless driver. a stray bullet, a fall from a ladder, a tiny blood clot, a ruptured blood vessel, or any of a thousand different things. I agree, maybe not carrying a "cover all" insurance policy that pays for office visits and non medically necessary expenses, but to fail to carry major medical insurance in case of cancer or a stroke or a heart attack or a serious injury is just totally irresponsible and is putting yourself and your family and your home and estate on the line. You can spend tens of thousands of dollars in an emergency room in 24 hours before they even find you a bed in the main hospital. It happens every day, seven days a week. You are pointing a one bullet revolver to your head every day without insurance and pulling the trigger. |
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Give me a BREAK Fatman. I do everything that Mr. Ohanlon does in terms of good diet, and exercise regularly, but still keep my employer subsidized insurance for reasons you alude to. I still resent, that I, a healthy by choice person that exercises and eats well, has to pay the same amount for health insurance as those who do not. Why do I pay the same as those that eat junkfood as a staple and watch TV as the only recreation? I am subsidizing all of those. I do not mind subsidizing someone who develops an unpreventable disease or condition, but hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes type II diabetes, and others are to a GREAT extent preventable by simple lifestyle choices. Now do not give me the excuse, I can't afford it, its not expensive to implement, it just takes willingness. |
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I used to be fat. As I traveled around Europe and South America, circumstance had me eating less and burning more. I am no longer fat. I look better, I have better endurance, I sleep better, and I’m healthier. This is not to say that it isn’t work. Denying oneself that extra cookie is a tough thing to do. It’s politically incorrect to say so, but the reason fat people are fat is because they eat too much. There’s not enough Alli, Dexatrim, or Weight Watchers on the planet to change that. The fact that the diet industry adds millions to the nation’s economy is little consolation to me when I get stuck next to a porker on the airplane.
Alan, I estimate that I save about $100 a month in groceries by buying unprocessed foods and preparing them myself. It’s helpful to know how to cook and to have the time to do it. Hint: the cookbook aisle is located near the diet book aisle at your local bookstore/library. In the European tradition, I live about a mile from where I work. My morning commute takes about fifteen minutes, if I hit the crosswalks wrong. Walking to work saves me about $350 a month, offset by housing that is about $200 more expensive. Fatman, while the risk of overexerting myself and dropping dead in the middle of the sidewalk is constantly on my mind, I’ve decided it’s worth the $150 I save. As for all you folks who work in downtown so you can afford your mini mansions in another county, sorry about your commute. It must really stink to spend all that unpaid time in your cars. Living far from your livelihood to save a couple of pennies on a mortgage is a false economy brought to you by Pulte, General Motors, Exxon, et. al. It floors me that Americans can’t see that their behavior is expensive, counter productive, and unsustainable. I agree with O’Hanlon that there should be a difference between lifestyle and health insurance. One’s body is a temple, and those who choose to defile their temples through bad lifestyles should pay more. Stupidity should be both painful and expensive. But, this is America. We will cry weight discrimination, have another Whopper, down a couple of Alli pills, buy a newer house further out in the country, and get an SUV with bigger seats. We’ll send the Republicans back to Congress so they can continue to shaft us with their banker authored bankruptcy bills. We’ll put a Corporate Democrat in the White House who has taken millions of dollars from the health insurance companies. Those companies will continue to deny our major claims while remaining in cahoots with the drug companies to keep us heavily medicated and dependent. What a country! |
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What a big crock of shitola. I have smoked and drank for years and still show up every day and work circles around the health nuts, gym nuts and the grossley obese. I haven't called in sick but a couple of times in the last 5-10 years. Three five minute smoke breaks equal the 15 minute breaks all the do-gooders and fattys get. I maby take three breaks the entire day. None of us are getting out of hear alive. Just another excuse for the insurance companies to jack up prices on everyone, including the health and gym nuts who are far more prone to injury. Keep jogging behing that bus you fool and blame second hand smoke when you get your lung cancer. What a bunch of pink panty cry babies you all are.
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I love listening to an reading all the "health freaks" brag about their condition, weight, exercise routines, diets. Let me clue you "clueless" people in who are in for a huge shock. When you reach a certain age, get married, get a job, family etc. there is a "fat fairy" that flies into your bedroom one night and touches you with her wand and you wake up one morning and none of your "mod" clothes seem to fit anymore. Pants don't clip, zippers don't zip, shirts don't button. There ain't nuthin you, nor God, nor modern medicine, nor prayer, nor cursing that is going to prevent that unless you just happen to be one of those rare people with some generic disease where you just don't absorb nutrition from what you eat. I have seen this a billion times over from the most outspoken critics of us "fatty's". Oh my Got they'd say, "I'll never get that way" and in a few years you see them and they aren't recognizeable anymore. Just grin and bear it and my advice to you is to keep your mouth zipped because you don't want it coming back to haunt you all you wrote and said about "fat people" because you gonna be one soon enough.
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Well Georgie, I have been married for 12 years. The fat fairy is yet to visit. I put at least 50 miles (and increasing) a week on the bike, and do strenght training three times a week. I am in better shape than I was when I graduated high school, when I was just skin and bones. I still wear a couple of shorts around the house, that my Mom got me in high school. So, no, no fairy, just a will to be and stay healthy. |
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My body my temple, I never asked you to worship at the altar.
I don't have a problem with tying health insurance premiums to one's overall health, but Tom's smugness is ridiculous. If he happens to suffer a catastrophic illness, who picks up the bill? I do. How is that fair? Tom, if you're so brave why not just become a Christian Scientist and forgo medicine altogether, I mean you'll never need it, so what's the bother? |
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Well, it appears that you missed the point, probably couldn't see it because you were so dizzy from working inebriated circles in the middle of a cloud of smoke.:-) He is saying, at least as far as I can understand,(this peabrain of mine's kinda slow), that he's just basically tired of paying for other peoples' bad lifestyles. If he or his family winds up in the hospital for something serious without insurance, they will still take care of you and bill you for it, and if you cannot pay it at once, they will put you on an installment plan. I've been there and done that. The ONE time in my working life that I was uninsured I wound up with a ruptured appendix. Long story, goes hand in hand with having a peabrain. The point is, though, that he's right. Of course, some people, like yourself, can "abuse" your body and get away with it. Others, however, don't get away with anything at all, nor are they willing to do what it takes to stay healthy. WHY should we have to finance their poor health that IS perfectly preventable, if they could just find the motivation to prevent it??? It's a million times worse that they allow their children to adopt the same habits!!! If people want to insist on having health insurance, perhaps the insurance companies could come up with a policy that denies coverage completely to people seeking treatment for maladies suffered because they couldn't be dissuaded from doing the things that caused them. It would go back to the old saying "you play, you pay." |
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And then a drunk driver smashes into your car and you end up in the hospital in serious but stable condition (okay, so they'll bill me). You have to have 3 surgeries to correct the damage (okay, so they'll bill me for that). Then you get MRSA the staph infection (again, I guess they'll bill me). You finally recover from MRSA and discover that the first surgeon didn't fix the problem. You find a new doctor who quickly discovers that not only did the first surgeon screw up, but he gave you another round of Staph.(More billing). Now you're in a different hospital being prepped for yet another surgery, which at this point is surgery number 12, to perform the final fix. At some point, the bill becomes more than any one person can bear and hospitals no longer are willing to extend credit since you're no longer a good credit risk. My father has been out of work for more than a year. He was hit by a drunk who had very little insurance (that money has been spent on medical bills). The damage done to him by the accident was so extensive that the first surgeon did what he could. If he hadn't had the health insurance, the surgeries and repair would have been beyond the scope of any of the 4 hospitals he's been too. I suppose he could always sue the each hospital for the staph infection...but that defeats the purpose. And btw, he was healthy before the accident. Now after a year of hospital food, his cholesterol is high. |
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Insurance rates should be based on what conditions, behaviors, lifestyles cause more illness or death. Those who are more inclined to run up costs should pay more than those who are not inclined (actuarily speaking) to be more expensive. I don't know which class I'd fall under and don't care. The less at risk folks shouldn't have to pay more to insure the more at risk folks.(bicyclists are more at risk than drivers) Simple economics. |
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Tom's article certainly makes sense, even though at age 80, I'm not about to opt out of co-pay insurance. I find it refreshing that there are still families who practice self-discipline and apparently agree on Tom's stated course of action.
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My family and I are living - and dying - proof that your health is much more than what you eat and how you exercise. My mother died of mesothelioma. That cancer results from asbestos. She neither ate it nor drank it in the cow's milk she never touched. All the exercise she got running around with three children could not have removed one microscopic particle of this poison from her lungs.
She was killed not by her 'lifestyle' but by the decisions of greedy manufacturers of goods used by military personnel during World War II, who knew the dangers of asbestos but coldly decided that the cost in lives and lawsuits was a risk worth taking. My mother's death was not 'what she ate'. It was what she inhaled. My father died as his father before him - bleeding to death of an agressive intestinal disorder that I've struggled with since the age of 6 months. It is not the result of types of food or lack of exercise; it is the result of defective genetic material. There are more than 1 million Americans who suffer with these diseases alone, and many more who are born with genetic makeup that leads to muscular dystrophy, crippling Rheumatoid arthritis, myasthenia gravis and other disorders. These conditions don't result from ingesting fat foods and cows milk and vegging out on a couch instead of bicycling. In all these cases, these people are what their DNA made them. Perhaps there is no one quite so arrogant and self-congratulatory as one who has - so far- won the DNA lottery. But the reality is, few of us get to die in our sleep at the age of 125. Sooner or later, something in the polluted air, something in the DNA - or even a drunk driver - can wreck the machinery. And when that day arrives, those who have mistakenly concluded that their excellent health is completely due to their own actions will become incredible burdens on the rest of us, because, absent any 'health' insurance, they will enter the medical system through the emergency room. That is the most expensive part of the system. I hope I live long enough to see Tom O'Hanlon have to eat his own words. By the way, most of us consider our daily activities to be our 'lives' not 'lifestyles'.'Lifestyles' are activities indulged in by rich people who can afford to be horsemen today, yachtmen tomorrow. The rest of us can afford only one way of living, and for those of us born not as perfect as Tom O'Hanlon, well, we do the best we can with what we have. |
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You don't know what you are talking about, man.
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Mr. O'Hanlon, you are not taking into account persons predispositions toward certain conditions. You are and have always been a string bean. And you also lack some common sense. I have had to avoid running over you and your kids several times because you think you own all of the road when riding. One day, you will become very ill. It is a fact of life. Who will pay for your bills then? Who will take care of your family. I bet you hold your breath at each physical. And it sounds like you are gambling with the health of your family. You better hope they have the exact same genetic code as you. BTW, your wife does not. This why I never have voted for you. You live in a fantasy land.
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“RACE CARS, NOT DOGS” Joined: Jul 7, 2007 Comments: 678 (currently) Central Florida ISP: Orlando, FL |
O'Hanlan may well be one of those "just gotta slap them upside the head" smug people. but he makes a good point - since lifestyle habits are used to determine insurance rates, i.e. smokers vs. non-smokers, then someone who doesn't indulge in unhealthy practices - eats a heart-healthy diet, exercises both anabolically and aerobically, goes to bed when the cows come in from the pasture, etc...- shouldn't have to pay a higher premium in order to "support" folks whose lifestyle habits contribute to chronic illness such as diabetes, etc. Genetic propensities for disease should not be penalized UNLESS the person continues to indulge in a habit that may be contributing factor to the onset of disease. But part of me, I admit, thinks smug people like O'Hanlon should pay a premium for just being annoying.
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Sooooo.... what exactly is your point besides making the point that he was healthy in the first place. After all, THAT'S what this is all about. It's not about whether or not some idiot's made a mess out of one's life, but whether or not one has screwed up one's own life. I never said that insurance was a bad idea. If you think so, feel free to quote the entire paragraph. I said that I don't think that people should expect for their employers to have to pay for THEIR POOR LIFESTYLE CHOICES. Is that clear enough??? I cannot make the words any smaller, but I suppose I could write in in Spanish next time, but then people complain will complain about it. You did, handily, make my point about what will happen if you show up to the hospital with no insurance and a host of life-threatening injuries. I know, it's no fun, I laid in the hospital for only three and a half days, fretting about what my financial position was going to be, I cannot imagine what something like what you've dealt with would be like. No, insurance is a good thing, I just don't like the way people abuse the system and then complain when their coverages are adjusted to alleviate it. |
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