51–60 of 127 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most health insurance doesn't cover weight loss treatment without a condition like T2D, heart issues, etc. If you're fat enough that it's damaging your health you're extremely unlikely to be able to lose it without significant support through medicine, nutritionists, etc.
Losing weight doesn't cost money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're that fat you're statistically unlikely to lose weight without medical intervention of some sort, even something as basic as talking to a fucking nutritionist about portion sizes.
I sympathize with how hard it is to lose weight, but at some point personal responsibility kicks in right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most health insurance doesn't cover weight loss treatment without a condition like T2D, heart issues, etc. If you're fat enough that it's damaging your health you're extremely unlikely to be able to lose it without significant support through medicine, nutritionists, etc.
Losing weight doesn't cost money.
I'm pretty sure it does. Unhealthy food is a lot cheaper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're that fat you're statistically unlikely to lose weight without medical intervention of some sort, even something as basic as talking to a fucking nutritionist about portion sizes.
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Since we're in a technology forum. Let's say you're a product owner and your app is suffering from severe performance issues. Would a "solution" of telling the developers of the app "just write code more efficiently! Use Google if you have to!" be acceptable to you? Do you think it would produce the results you want?
Related: ProPublica investigation on doctors performing unnecessary amputations on poor black diabetes patients, because they don't pay enough attention to the patients and also get paid more to amputate. https://features.propublica.org/diabetes-amputations/black-a... Another link if you are skeptical there is a racial issue: page 12 of https://data.dartmouthatlas.org/downloads/reports/Diabetes_r... . Among Medicare…
Frontline did an episode a while back were dentists were performing unnecessary major dental work on poor people when the government had a program to pay the dentists for such work. Frontline was outraged at the dentists, but did not seem to recognize that this is the inevitable result of incentives the government set up.
"Seventy-nine out of the 100 counties with the highest levels of medical debt are in states that have not expanded Medicaid under the ACA" Who benefits in these 10 states that have still failed to expand Medicaid? What is the upside, to either the populations of these states or the politicians who run these states and make those decisions? Because the downsides are obvious and seem to directly harm a lot of people.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying...
> Debates raged in Tennessee around the same time about the state’s participation in the Affordable Care Act and the related expansion of Medicaid coverage. Had Trevor lived a thirty-nine-minute drive away in neighboring Kentucky, he might have topped the list of candidates for expensive medications called polymerase inhibitors, a lifesaving liver transplant, or other forms of treatment and support. Kentucky adopted the ACA and began the expansion in 2013, while Tennessee’s legislature repeatedly blocked Obama-era health care reforms.
> Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”
> At the most basic level, Trevor died of the toxic effects of liver damage caused by hepatitis C. Yet Trevor’s deteriorating condition resulted also from the toxic effects of dogma. Dogma that told him that governmental assistance in any form was evil and not to be trusted, even when the assistance came in the form of federal contracts with private health insurance or pharmaceutical companies, or from expanded communal safety nets. Dogma that, as he made abundantly clear, aligned with beliefs about a racial hierarchy that overtly and implicitly aimed to keep white Americans hovering above Mexicans, welfare queens, and nonwhite others. Dogma suggesting to Trevor that minority groups received lavish benefits from the state, even though he himself lived and died on a low-income budget with state assistance. Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die for his place in this hierarchy, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Losing weight doesn't cost money.
> Losing weight doesn't cost money. I'm pretty sure it does. Unhealthy food is a lot cheaper.
Related: ProPublica investigation on doctors performing unnecessary amputations on poor black diabetes patients, because they don't pay enough attention to the patients and also get paid more to amputate. https://features.propublica.org/diabetes-amputations/black-a... Another link if you are skeptical there is a racial issue: page 12 of https://data.dartmouthatlas.org/downloads/reports/Diabetes_r... . Among Medicare…
Frontline did an episode a while back were dentists were performing unnecessary major dental work on poor people when the government had a program to pay the dentists for such work. Frontline was outraged at the dentists, but did not seem to recognize that this is the inevitable result of incentives the government set up.
OTOH, if the "unnecessary" there just means "not satisfying the platonically correct cost/benefit analysis", and there's still some net benefit to the patient, and the government program didn't ask the dentists to use such CBA, then I wouldn't consider that abusive.
(I can imagine Frontline being equally outraged at dentists denying government-subsidized dental care on grounds of failing the platonic CBA too...)
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I don't think it helps to call them "degenerate." They're human beings. Some of them, more clever than you. Who are trapped in lives of quiet desperation. We think we are civilized, but we are just as barbarous as the world of Hugo's Les Misérables. We live in a world filled with Inspector Javert's spending their lives chasing their Valjeans.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most health insurance doesn't cover weight loss treatment without a condition like T2D, heart issues, etc. If you're fat enough that it's damaging your health you're extremely unlikely to be able to lose it without significant support through medicine, nutritionists, etc.
Losing weight doesn't cost money.
It can if you live in a food desert:
> USDA’s Economic Research Service previously identified more than 6,500 food desert tracts in the United States based on 2000 Census and 2006 data on locations of supermar- kets, supercenters, and large grocery stores. In this report, we examine the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of these tracts to see how they differ from other census tracts and the extent to which these differences influence food desert status. Relative to all other census tracts, food desert tracts tend to have smaller populations, higher rates of abandoned or vacant homes, and residents who have lower levels of education, lower incomes, and higher unemployment. Census tracts with higher poverty rates are more likely to be food deserts than otherwise similar low-income census tracts in rural and in very dense (highly populated) urban areas. For less dense urban areas, census tracts with higher concentrations of minority populations are more likely to be food deserts, while tracts with substantial decreases in minority populations between 1990 and 2000 were less likely to be identified as food deserts in 2000.
* PDF: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45014/30940_er...