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Old January 19th, 2009, 03:10 PM   #65 (permalink)
MohandasKGanja
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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Insurance companies would love to eliminate the highest-risk, most-expensive people from their risk pools. That could include obese people, people with epilepsy, cancer, genetic markers for future cancer, people likely to have high-risk pregnancies, smokers, drinkers, ginger kids (skin cancer), and on and on.

It could be a real Pandora's Box to start eliminating or penalizing obese people for having a higher risk profile, because it would set a precedent for allowing someone to be penalized for having that risk factor. If you were really healthy with no history of health issues, then you would probably make out like a bandit, but the other people would get really nailed.

Smoking and overreating are much more controllable factors than someone who has history of high-blood pressure, no matter what the weight. But with the cost of health-care skyrocketing, it might not be a bad idea to start looking for things like inducing people with weight-related diabetes, high-blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, etc., through both positive and negative measures to lower their risk factors, as well as the costs to other people.
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