OP, do you feel guilty blaming people for illnesses that they may not have had much control over, if they inherited genes which made them more likely?

Rather than focusing on making people feel guilty for something, why not try to spend your time helping people in need or doing some good for society?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I eat healthfully, I don't drink, I exercise regularly, yet I'm still overweight. I don't feel like a "systemic burden", nor do I feel guilty.

If you're overweight, you don't eat healthfully. Period. Regardless, I don't think you are what the OP was referring to.

I do eat healthfully. I cook everything from scratch, I don't eat candy/ice cream or other junk food, and I count calories. I gained my weight a long time ago (during my first pregnancy) and have not been able to lose it since. Period. Funny how my skinny colleagues cram down fast food, frozen burritos, doughnuts, lattes, bowls of candy and chips, yet they remain thin. I call it genetics.

If you cut the intake of your healthy food by half, you would lose weight with the same genes.

I have pre-cancerous skin lesions which are 100% due to sun exposure. I never 'laid out' and baked in the sun, I grew up on a farm and rarely wore sunscreen - none of us did. I also spend 5 years doing development work in the tropics. I have to go to the dermatologist every 3 months to have them checked/removed. I don't feel guilty at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I eat healthfully, I don't drink, I exercise regularly, yet I'm still overweight. I don't feel like a "systemic burden", nor do I feel guilty.

If you're overweight, you don't eat healthfully. Period. Regardless, I don't think you are what the OP was referring to.

I do eat healthfully. I cook everything from scratch, I don't eat candy/ice cream or other junk food, and I count calories. I gained my weight a long time ago (during my first pregnancy) and have not been able to lose it since. Period. Funny how my skinny colleagues cram down fast food, frozen burritos, doughnuts, lattes, bowls of candy and chips, yet they remain thin. I call it genetics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I eat healthfully, I don't drink, I exercise regularly, yet I'm still overweight. I don't feel like a "systemic burden", nor do I feel guilty.

If you're overweight, you don't eat healthfully. Period. Regardless, I don't think you are what the OP was referring to.

Hey- I am not PP - I am not overweight yet but I am getting there due to thyroid disease. It takes a while to treat and was caught just a few months ago. I work out for 60-90 minutes a day and eat pretty well too. I feel sick all the damn time and still gain weight. Have a little compassion, not every single thing is black and white.

Anonymous wrote:The single biggest contributor to rising health care costs is age. More than half of all Medicare expenditures pay for care of people who die within two months.

So, OP, you're just a guilty as the rest of us, unless you have a plan to ensure you don't get old.

Agree. Not sure why everyone wants to dump all over fat people who will keel over from a stroke or heart attack at 55, or smokers who will die of lung cancer at 60, or hell, even drunks who die of cirrhosis in their mid-40s. The people who really cost us are your lithe little grandmas who end up in medicaid-funded nursing homes until they finally gasp their last at 93, using up not only medicaid nursing funds, but also medicare, and years and years of SS benefits.

If you really want to get into who costs and who doesn't, it's not fair to only account for some costs....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Can anyone do 125K worth of volunteer work in one year.
Best for people to take control of their lives and stop costing the system so much.
More money to treat kids with disabilities and people with diseases that were not self induced.

No, but they can
(1) work in a field where you contribute positively to society(2) avoid working in something that contributes negatively to society (arguably: brokering bad mortgages, transfer pricing, and I can think of some more but some of you would probably be insulted)

So how about it, OP? You may be sparing the government from treating your diabetes or lung cancer (assuming you don't get some other genetically-linked cancer that costs equal bucks). But are you contributing positively or negatively to society?

THis is pretty subjective. Enterainment industry? Military/defense? Accounting? Some would say yes, some would say no.

Anonymous wrote:

Can anyone do 125K worth of volunteer work in one year.
Best for people to take control of their lives and stop costing the system so much.
More money to treat kids with disabilities and people with diseases that were not self induced.

No, but they can
(1) work in a field where you contribute positively to society
(2) avoid working in something that contributes negatively to society (arguably: brokering bad mortgages, transfer pricing, and I can think of some more but some of you would probably be insulted)

So how about it, OP? You may be sparing the government from treating your diabetes or lung cancer (assuming you don't get some other genetically-linked cancer that costs equal bucks). But are you contributing positively or negatively to society?

Anonymous wrote:The single biggest contributor to rising health care costs is age. More than half of all Medicare expenditures pay for care of people who die within two months.

So, OP, you're just a guilty as the rest of us, unless you have a plan to ensure you don't get old.

NP here - this is true. Even if you lead a healthy lifestyle, you will eventually die, and for many end-of-life patients the healthcare costs are catastrophic.

OP, almost every illness can be caused, created, exacerbated, or related to lifestyle. Do you feel guilty for getting a blister from new shoes? A sunburn from skiing? A broken leg from playing frisbee? Indigestion from eating pizza? High blood pressure from stress?

Anonymous wrote:The single biggest contributor to rising health care costs is age. More than half of all Medicare expenditures pay for care of people who die within two months.

So, OP, you're just a guilty as the rest of us, unless you have a plan to ensure you don't get old.

There is expensive old age and regular old age.
For the most part, the elderly in the US had a large tobacco exposure, partly not their fault because we did not realize how harmful it was.
One point, obese smokers don't live that long, so the medicare costs might be lower but the private insurer sees the costs if the person dies before becoming eligible for medicare.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/30/obesity-now-costs-americans-more-in-healthcare-costs-than-smoking/

The single biggest contributor to rising health care costs is age. More than half of all Medicare expenditures pay for care of people who die within two months.

So, OP, you're just a guilty as the rest of us, unless you have a plan to ensure you don't get old.

Anonymous wrote:Genuine question for the OP: Do you consider yourself as someone who contributes to your community/society? Do you volunteer, do you donate blood, are you an organ donor?

It's possible to be obese or a smoker and have higher healthcare costs and be a more productive member of society than someone who is 100% healthy and looks at other human beings as the "problem" with this country.

Can anyone do 125K worth of volunteer work in one year.
Best for people to take control of their lives and stop costing the system so much.
More money to treat kids with disabilities and people with diseases that were not self induced.

I'm obese and I smoked for 13 years. I still don't have any illness related to my past smoking habits and my obesity, but probably will in the future. I think I might feel regretful, but certainly not guilty. And even the "regretful" part is not certain.

Genuine question for the OP: Do you consider yourself as someone who contributes to your community/society? Do you volunteer, do you donate blood, are you an organ donor?

It's possible to be obese or a smoker and have higher healthcare costs and be a more productive member of society than someone who is 100% healthy and looks at other human beings as the "problem" with this country.