Your Wife Is Too Fat To Live In Our Country
Rockadelic
Out Digging 13,993 Posts
Universal Health Care??________________________________________________________________________________A British man who moved to New Zealand has been told by officials that his wife is too fat to join him.Richie Trezise, 35, a rugby-playing Welshman, lost weight to gain entry to New Zealand after initially being rejected for being overweight and a potential burden on the health care system.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/17/wfat117.xml
Comments
What's the big deal? I'm all for this!!!!!! it promotes food awareness & exercise.
Let's Go Soulstrut!
hmmm yeah i'm a bit suspect about it. Affirming one type of discrimination opens doors to possible future discrimination towards other more sensitive demographic categories. i.e. ethnicity, sexual preference etc
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.
So when I applied for health insurance and got rejected I was being discriminated against? Don't think so, they had certain guidlines (which where bullshit btw) that I didn't meet.
FYI:
For all you Cali folks, Tonik-the health insurance aimed at young people is a sort of a crock. You basically have to have absolutely ZERO health issues, like NEVER been to the doctor for a check-up, s.t.d. check, broken leg that heald etc in over 10 years or something.
blue cross PPO i wub u.
Just sayin if they can justify not letting in fat people because of the strain on public resources, Some folks in the future might say well we shouldn't let in this type of migrant/refugee because the these statistics say they cost the govt this amount of money for this reason.
is your car more likely to be stolen in this postcode, is your height-weight ratio more suceptible to health problems, etc.
ok so its a stretch but it is true.
I guess this was before your BBW encounteur. Plus you are a few years younger.
What's your co-pay BTW? I'm at 40$ a visit.
DOES THE SPOT NEXT DOOR DELIVER?
I understand the stress it would cause on a universal health system, but there are a lot of reasons people end up this way. For my friend it was his early life in tribal Afghanistan that included sexual abuse and warfare before fleeing to the U.S. where he would be a social outcast for most of his young adult life.
I had a hard time reacting to the day to day living of a morbidly obese person while he was visiting. I never imagined what it was like until I spent a good solid 48 hours with him. When you see people at the fast food joint ordering enough food for 4 people its easy to make judgments or look the other way, when you see your best friend killing himself with food it makes you realize what a strong addiction it becomes.
It was especially heart breaking hearing him talk about having kids and grandkids because honestly I cant imagine someone in his condition living past 40-45. I hate to say that of course, but I have already lost a good friend to heart failure at the young age of 37 and for a lot of the same reasons.
It was an eye opener. He spoke of his sister, who is also over weight, starting to eat healthier and moving into organic food options. He responded to this with a " thats fine, but she shouldn't push it on me" kind of reaction. I don't know how to help him, I want to tell him he is going to die if he doesn't turn around his life, maybe at the cost of our friendship, I'm not sure. Like with any addiction, I feel you have to be ready to admit you have a problem and actually have to want to quit but as I mentioned low self esteem and a long history of abuse puts a damper on ones ability to see that they are worth more than that.
In addition to witnessing what it is like for him to live day to day was the reality of what it actually costs for a person to have this addiction as well as the garbage that a morbidly obese person can produce. One days worth of trash is more than I produce in a 5 day work week. 24 soda cans, two bags of chips, two bags of jerky, a shit load of candy, eating out, eating in..boxed frozen stuff etc... etc.
In a way I agree with the N.Z. stand on it. It would be amazing if the U.S. Govt would offer some kind of bonus like lower taxes for families that lost 100 lbs a year, or rewarded people for lowering their trash output, something, anything that would encourage people to live well and help the environment.
Anyways, I look at it a lot differently now. I hope I can gain the guster to write him a letter and encourage him to save his life. I love and care for him dearly and would love for him to live out his dreams of having a family...but the way it is going, he wont be around in another 10 years or so. Its pretty sad when you think about it and it isn't a laughing matter in my mind anymore.
HIYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
No more coming home stinking like smoke, feeling like crap the next morning as if you smoked two packs of smokes even though you just had five cigarettes the whole night and having stinky records with smoky ashy grooves. Nothing worse than opening your 45 box and getting a waft of cigarette smoke.
It makes bars look like they're totally jumping if there's 20 people standing outside and I like it how there's different parties happening all the time, one inside the place and one out front/out back, etc.
Who said that?
No one, but they (we) are a huge strain on the healthcare system as well.
In many cases these are the EXACT people who need this "free" health care as they can't/don't have the job or means to pay for individual health care.
I'll suggest that while it appears some folks here understand why NZ bans people from living in their country who may bring these bad habits with them, the average American would be up in arms if such laws were implemented and enforced here in the U.S.
And it is amusing to see people here who typically cry out for racial equality to stereotype and be so bigoted towards other groups of people.
I heart SS and it's never ending supply of entertainment.
Tax the offending products and use the money to fund the health care system. There's already hefty taxes on alcohol and tobacco... junk food / fast food / soda should be treated the same way.
oh right, I agree totally with what you are saying. I smoke too and the Bar I work at has a no smoking on the weekends policy, and it is so much better and nicer not to have that looming over you, or having people blow straight in your face over the bar. Oregon is not going 100% smoke free until 2009, I hope to quit long before then though.
I know I took the bait, and perhaps I should refrain from sharing personal realizations on the internet. I just felt it had a place since it happened just the other week and here is this thread about fat people. Like I said it just opened my eyes to what a day in the life of a morbidly obese person is like. If anything it just gave me insight to both sides of the coin, but I am in no position to say what americans would do if faced with the same questions, but I think it would be cool if they did something.
Rich I am not really against the idea of fines or penalties for smoking and eating related health issues. I have a very conflicted feeling towards the traditional "don't tread on me" mentality because it translates in 2007 to "allow me to do whatever I want no matter what the cost to other people".
Smoking in restaurants, with babies around? "Don't tread on me!"
Eat less fast food? "This is America! Don't tread on me!"
Drive a more fuel-efficient car? etc etc etc
The only thing that got me to quit smoking, other than the threat of health problems (which never were able to persuade me on their own) was the cost issue. New York taxes cigarettes heavily and it just wasn't worth $30/week to kill myself
Just curious....what is a decent price to pay to kill yourself??
Heavy taxes on cigarettes, booze, fast foods. Tax breaks for gym memberships, fitness equipment, etc. Subsidized fresh produce delivery to low income families' homes. No pop, fast foods, sugary crap, fatty or fried foods in school cafeterias. On-going ads and programs to get people to quit smoking, get active and eat better.
see the sad thing here is america has a long history of discriminative immigration policies and i dont think folks were really "up in arms" over it.