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Japan Imposes "Fine On Fat"
An anonymous reader writes "A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have mandatory obesity checks (video link) for all their employees and employees' family members over the age of 40, CNN reports. If the employee or family member is deemed obese, and does not lose the extra fat soon, their employer faces large fines. The legislated upper limit for the waistline is 33.5" for men, and 35.5" for women. Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government? By comparison, the average waistline in America in 2005 was 39 inches for men, 37 inches for women."
if it gets rid of that fat fuck CowboyNeal, I'm all for it.
Do you smoke?
Do you drink?
Drug tests?
Any of this sound familiar in a survey from your insurance application or work orientation pack?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
The question is specious: there are dozens of countries with public health care, but they don't have such crazy restrictions (including your neighbour, Canada). I chalk it up to a Japanese culture that accepts such a standard. And don't give me the fat-people-will-cost-me-more in a public system argument, because they are costing you more in a private system, unless fatter people at your work pay more for their insurance plan...
What about the sumo wrestlers?! Don't they get a say!?
While "big boned" is a complete cop out, there are people with naturally larger waists... or worse yet, hormonal/glandular issues...
http://billstclair.com/DoingFreedom/000623/df.0600.fa.lipidleggin.html Written in 1978...scary and well worth reading (it's a short story, won't take long to read)
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Well wow, that's just dumb. Didn't they read that smokers and fat people cost the government less thank skinny people?. The study was done by the Dutch, and their healthcare is mandatory private (like people are talking about for the US) supplemented by socialized healthcare for people who are elderly or unable to otherwise function, so I'd think they'd have a pretty good idea of what the costs are. //Sorry about the stupid dashes. Goddamn system isn't taking my paragraph breaks.
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Sure, the smokers and fat people have more health problems, but they have the decency to drop dead and not linger on the government dime, senile and incontinent, for a few extra decades.
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I try to keep healthy, but when I hit the point where I'm not enjoying life much any more, I'm eating whatever the hell I want, taking up heroin. I'll be mainlining viagra II, and having sex with the kind of scary women that'd have sex with me! You see these articles coming out of Florida about old guys getting arrested for trying to buy drugs, just for the hell of it, and I don't understand what the problem is. This society is so fricking weird; god forbid you threaten your own ability to live to 110.
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Life is one of those things where it's really about quality, not quantity.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
So, when do they extend this to a minimum female bust line?
If you don't have at least a 34C, your employer provided insurance will mandate a boob job.
I'm thinking the gov't inspector position on that law will be a highly coveted spot.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Once the government is in charge of health care, they have a responsibility to manage every part of your life which effects your health. You may only eat and drink healthy products. No more smoking. Safe cars only. No motorcycles! These will all be necessary to combat the increased cost that government control of health care will create.
Does this apply to foreign workers? For instance, if I were to go work in Japan for a year or two after I'm 40, would my employer be fined if I didn't shrink my 37 to a 33.5?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I had the impression this sport was hugely popular over there (got that from reading Freakonomics). Will they make an exception for wrestlers?
How can you have a single upper-limit on waist sizes? Are all people in Japan the same height or are short people allowed to be fatter than tall ones?
And how is the employer really responsible for their employees' weight? OK sure, there's going to be a bit of correllation between the general health attitude at your job and your own weight and from what I understand there's more of a culture for this thing in Japan but it still seems like a big leap to make in what a company is responsible for and subsequently what an employee has to answer to his employer about. Can constantly fat people be fired for costing their company too much in fines?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
"Fine on fat" has nothing to do with universal health coverage. It has everything to do with bad policy and even worse laws (not to mention stupid lawmakers).
There are tons of countries in the world today with universal health coverage who don't engage in that kind of stupid law making.
Then again, it is mostly accepted these days that being overweight is bad for you, in all kind of different ways, so maybe a tax on fat is not such a bad idea, especially if human fat is recycled into bio-fuel. Fight Club, anyone?
Besides, wait until they apply this law to the sumotori... and the howls of outrage from the sumo-loving japanese public... :-)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I don't think this has anything to do with people being overweight at its core. This is more likely an anti western culture move to try to stop Japan from becoming more like America. There have been similar proposals made to try to make western style toilets more expensive so they will not be commonly used. Older Japanese are generally worried that Japan is losing its culture and that tends to lead to strange laws made in an attempt to stop the so called slide. The law itself is rather stupid idea though and I don't think it's likely to be in place 5 years down the road unless the penalty is a lot lighter than it sounds at face value.
How about some kind of mandatory test (every couple years or so) in which people are placed in various life-threatening situations involving wild animals, obstacle courses, etc.?
Those who exhibit a reasonable level of fitness would have a reasonable chance of evading death, while those who "let themselves go" are much more likely to end up as food for some kind of large carnivore or as feedstock for an industrial wood chipper.
Have the whole thing take place in some kind of a large controlled environment with lots of cameras and audio pickups, then sell advertising rights to the 24/7 broadcast of all the mayhem.
All upside. No downside
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Yes they are. Deviants are stretched or squashed as needed, and beaten for their insolence.
Increasing the cost of obesity reduces obesity. We don't know how much it would, but studies from cigarette taxes show that increases costs decrease consumption of even highly desirable things.
Obesity increases fuel consumption -- the obese eat more (more food transport and production fuel use) and weigh more (more transport costs in themselves). They eat 18% more, according the Lancet. The Lancet goes on to suggest that reducing obesity would reduce global warming.
And yes, their health care costs us -- we should be getting some of that back.
A small tax (in stores, vending machines and restaurants) on foods which digest quickly seems like a FANTASTIC idea. Not a big deal for someone that eats a few Snickers bars every month, but a noticeable pain for someone who eats them every day.
Even with private health insurance, those who live unhealthy lifestyles have the net effect of increasing insurance premiums for everyone.
The insurance companies maintain profitability by selecting price points that set them ahead, given all of the expenses they are likely to incur. The more fat people they have on their plans, the more likely they are to spend money on all the fat-related medical issues that arise, so the more they must charge.
While it may be unfair to target fat people (or smokers or drinkers or what-have-you), isn't it equally unfair to make healthy people pay a lot of extra money to support the unhealthy lifestyles of their neighbors?
As usual, this door swings both ways, and it doesn't matter whether the health care is universal or privatized...any kind of medical insurance raises these issues.
Surely that counts out virtually most athletes in sports such as Weightlifting, Rugby Union, Shotput, Discus and many many more sports in which the atheletes are likely to be semi pro and have to have a 9 - 5 to help support themselves financially. Let alone Sumo Wrestling which is what football is to us Brits! Thats real football by the way to all you yanks :-p. You can be very healthy and very muscular and have a waist well above 33.5, I know a guy whose a semi professional Rugby Union player who has a 42 inch waist and a 55 inch chest, and is fitter than 99% of people on the street! It should be done on proper BMI (Body Mass Index), not including just height and weight as most do, but a real BMI includes skin fold measurements and takes into account percentage body fat and needs to be carried out by a qualified professional for the results to be accurate. If your gonna introduce a law which has monetary fines attatched to it at least make it fair!
"We don't know how much it would, but studies from cigarette taxes show that increases costs decrease consumption of even highly desirable things."
So fewer and fewer people are getting what they desire, because other anonymous people don't desire it and would like to force them into a position where they can't afford their desires! What an idiotic and indefensible notion.
"Obesity increases fuel consumption -- the obese eat more (more food transport and production fuel use) and weigh more (more transport costs in themselves)."
If they can afford the food, who's to tell them they should be allowed to eat it. What happened to "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness"?
"And yes, their health care costs us -- we should be getting some of that back."
Only if you choose to be part of the system. The difference between that and a publicly-funded system is that you have no choice.
"A small tax..."
It is not the size that matters. Forcibly taking away someone's productivity (in the form of money) is no different from theft.
While it may be unfair to target fat people (or smokers or drinkers or what-have-you), isn't it equally unfair to make healthy people pay a lot of extra money to support the unhealthy lifestyles of their neighbors?
So, what if I have good genes.... and you have bad? If we are willing to open up the can of worms of risk assignment, then why should we ignore science and not surcharge those people who have doomed genetics? What, exactly, entitles people with weaker genes to a health discount at the expense of someone else?
This is my sig.
Shaquille O'Neil is not exactly fat at 7'1" and 325, but he has a BMI of 31.6 -- well into the "obese" range. A 5'2" woman would have to weigh 173 pounds to have the same BMI as Shaq -- and I know damn well that 173 and 5'2 is rolling fat.
So tell us how useful the BMI is as a gauge of obesity again.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You choose to have an unhealthy lifestyle, and thus there are incentives to encourage you to change.
Last I checked, I have very little control over my genetic code (still trying to invent that time machine so I can kill my father before I was born...)
That said, I'm rather unhappy that as a moderate consumer of alcohol, my insurance could group me with binge drinkers and charge me more money, even though there's evidence that moderate drinkers are healthier than non-drinkers. Who gets to decide what's science and what's not?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
You cannot control your genes.
You CAN control your obesity, alcoholism, and smoking.
If we are going to take this route, let's at least do it right.
The point is to penalize unhealthy people, correct? There are studies which show pretty conclusively that the healthiest people are the ones which are slightly over the 'ideal' weight. Folks carrying a bit of extra weight (read: normal) live longer than folks who maintain that beautiful body that TV insists you should have.
So, let's penalize the thin people too. If their lifestyle is as unhealthy as the fat folks, why exempt them?
When I was working on the vascular surgery ward, the beds were crammed with two kinds of people ; smokers, and type-2 diabetics. Many of them were both kinds. Most type-2 diabetes is self-inflicted and can be avoided through managing your weight and diet properly. Combining smoking with type-2 diabetes is basically asking to have your legs amputated.
When I was working on the pulmonary ward, the beds were crammed with 2 kinds of people - smokers, and asthmatics.
When I was working the infectious diseases ward, the patients were predominately junkies, with conditions brought on as a result of their habit.
When I was on ENT, the patients were of three types ; young children needing routine surgery like tonsillectomies and ear grommets, persistent nosebleeds, and really nasty mouth and throat cancers. The cancer patients were, you guessed it, all smokers.
So the vast majority of patients with chronic, manageable, expensive conditions, some requiring multiple surgeries just to get back a fraction of the function they should have had, were smokers, and fatties, and the worst of them were fat smokers.
Smoking and obesity cost the health service huge sweaty wads of money and I find your assertion to the contrary to be baseless.
...when you're big in Japan.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
And that source is dubious at best.
They all cite the same article, and three of them are blogs opining about the implications of said article. NOt what I'd call quality sources (but I'm not trying to force my opinion down people's throats, so my standards for sources are higher).
"If fat people could control their weight merely by exerting a reasonably amount of conscious control over their diets (i.e., will power), they would"
Yet they can do exactly that and choose not to. Why are you saying "they would" when it's obvious to everyone that they don't?
"Being fat is a miserable fucking experience, and no one would put up with it if they didn't have to."
And yet THEY DO PUT UP WITH IT, despite your vacuous assertion otherwise. Why are you claiming "no one would put up with it" when it's obvious to everyone that they do, in total opposition to your point.
You seem to be claiming fat people can't control their weight through dietary choices and exercise and that were someone fat, they wouldn't choose to remain that way if they didn't have to.
To quote YOU "do you realize how incredibly fucking stupid that steaming pile you splattered on my screen sounds"?
If you don't take care of your body, and you become an expensive data point in your insurance system, you raise the premiums for everyone else. We all seem to generally agree on that. We disagree on what, if anything, should be done to make the system more "fair."
Likewise, if you don't raise your kid right and he becomes a murdering thug, you lower the quality of life for everyone else. Should your performance as a parent be judged, fined, taxed, regulated too? The societal impact of poor parenting is at least as great as that of too many cheeseburgers.
Personally, I will grudgingly pay for Mr. Unhealthy's insurance, and I will sadly let the person next door loose a brood of poorly socialized amoral goons on the world, because I think the alternative--trying to fix things--will end up being worse.
The biggest crime that fat people commit is the stealing of time from us normal folks.
As you may or may not know, gravity slows down time. Gravity is the product of mass. Their larger than average masses steals a larger than average portion of time from you as you pass through their (considerable) area of influence.
I'm walking and gravity is constant; normal; time is passing. Then I attempt to squeeze around this fat person because they're too slow. To the fat person, they're walking at a normal speed, but their time operates slowers than ours so relative to us and the natural, they're in fact walking slower.
So as I pass them, the grip of their massive gravity slows down the space-time I have to walk through to pass them. Even though it seems like it only took me 1 second to walk past them, 1.x seconds elapsed in the real world outside the gravity of the fat person.
In affect, the fat person STOLE X amount of time from me!!!
You can't get that back.
This phenomenon also accounts for fat people having lower IQs (just google it). There answers always take longer to formulate because their time is slowed down relative to ours. (assuming you're not fat)
The time-differential between obese and non-obese people is accountable for countless things.
You also might notice that the Japanese appear to be smarter than Americans. And potentially more efficient and harder workings. You'll also notice that per capita they're skinnier. Giving them more relative-time in a day to accomplish the same tasks.
It wouldn't surprise if the American day is actually 23.5 hours compared to the 24 hour day the rest of the world enjoys.