(no subject)

[ebonlock]

Free market, bitches:

For employees at Clarian Health, feeling the burn of trying to lose weight will take on new meaning.

In late June, the Indianapolis-based hospital system announced that starting in 2009, it will fine employees $10 per paycheck if their body mass index [BMI, a ratio of height to weight that measures body fat] is over 30. If their cholesterol, blood pressure, and glucose levels are too high, they’ll be charged $5 for each standard they don’t meet. Ditto if they smoke: Starting next year, they’ll be charged another $5 in each check.

Clarian has been making headlines for its aggressive and unusual approach to covering escalating health-care costs. Rather than taking the more common step of giving employees incentives for merely participating in its wellness programs, such as joining a smoking cessation group or using a health coach, Clarian is actually measuring outcomes. And unlike most employers, it is penalizing workers for poor health instead of rewarding them for taking healthy steps.

I seem to recall one of the arguments against socialized medicine having something to do with the "nanny state" taking away your free choice, but perhaps I'm mistaken...

Socialized medicine? Yes, please.

Comments

[scoreboard.livejournal.com]

I don't care how bad the health care gets - I want socialized medicine for one reason and one reason only: to drive existing insurers and health care groups into bankruptcy. I am perfectly willing to cut off my head to spite my face. I don't care anymore - I want to see them penniless and starving, reduced to groveling in the streets, ideally with their management ground up into free meatloaf for the unemployed. I have had it up to here, and I don't care if I rot to death waiting for an aspirin, so long as they're living in hell.

But then I'm having a bad day. YMMV.

[pikabot]

Speaking as a Canadian, I can safely say that health WOULDN'T get that bad; rendering it a win-win situation for you!

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

You know at the end of Michael Moore's film Sicko he posted a URL for hookacanuck.com, where Americans could find single Canadians to marry for health coverage. I chuckled at the time, but I must admit, I'm finding it less funny with each passing day...

[pikabot]

There is nothing that cannot be improved by increased quantities of Canada. This is actual science. Do not argue with me, I am a Doktor.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

I see a lawsuit in the making.