Posted on 06/27/2012 9:55:53 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
In a move that could significantly expand insurance coverage of weight-loss treatments, a federal health advisory panel on Monday recommended that all obese adults receive intensive counseling in an effort to rein in a growing health crisis in America.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force urged doctors to identify patients with a body mass index of 30 or more — currently 1 in 3 Americans — and either provide counseling themselves or refer the patient to a program designed to promote weight loss and improve health prospects.
Under the current healthcare law, Medicare and most private insurers would be required to cover the entire cost of weight-loss services that meet or exceed the task force's standards.
That could all change Thursday, when the U.S. Supreme Courtis expected to rule on the constitutionality of President Obama's healthcare law, which requires adoption of certain recommendations from the task force, such as this one on obesity.
Few private health insurers now reimburse physicians for weight-loss counseling or pay for programs that patients seek out on their own. A growing number, in fact, charge obese patients more for coverage — a policy that some public health officials have denounced as punitive and ineffective.
The task force concluded after a review of the medical literature that the most successful programs in improving patients' health were "intensive, multicomponent behavioral interventions." They involve 12 to 26 counseling sessions a year with a physician or community-based program, the panel said.
Successful programs set weight-loss goals, improve knowledge about nutrition, teach patients how to track their eating and set limits, identify barriers to change (such as a scarcity of healthful food choices near home) and strategize on ways to maintain lifestyle changes, the panel found.
In some cases, programs include exercise sessions as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The communists that have infiltrated are government are pining for the ways of China. Go to Hell, communists!
Yeah, have a social worker talk people out of being fat, that should work.
our government
Nanny State PING!
This is about far more than fat people and tax deductible dieting. If it was that much I’d say fine, make these diet programs tax deductible and see what happens.
This is about jolly well anything the high muckety mucks think they ought to do about people’s health no matter how quixotic. Imagine Bloomberg with PPACA powers.
Hey! Wait a minute! I AM fat!!!
Thanks for the ping! And... congratulations!
Fat people are the last to die in a Famine.
Skinny people are the first to die.
Remember that next time you decide on the Salad rather than the Big Mac.
OK..they can start the program with that fat lady in the uniform...the Sturgeon General. If they can get her to loose about 50 lbs they can trumpet their success.
Geez, what’s next? Taxpayer funded contraception and abortion?
“Obese” Americans should demand that powah-hungry, lowlife politicians and “public servants” also be required to get “counseling”. Preferably the kind that involves frequent ass kickings by two doctors named Vinnie and Louie.
As much as I detest this, I am chuckling a bit at the thought of what some overweight liberals I know will think when they’re assigned a therapist to counsel them on their weight. Compliments of their hero Obama.
Eliminate food stamps to anyone who is overweight.
Historically, that might have been true for some time, but maybe not today. And we haven't seen famine since the USSR.
The flip side is that some skinny people eat the Big Mac AND the salad and the fries.
I don't expect to be the first one down. ;)
/johnny
This obese classification is so stupid I want to scream.
I took my five year old grandson for his kindergarten check up and he was declared obese because of the federal guild lines.
The doc kept reweighing him, she said good god I can count his ribs, he is not obese.
Yet, he became part of the fed statistics.
I am beginning to loath any/all federal guild lines.
Wheat Belly diet? Is that anything like the beer belly diet?
I guarantee that the government will get the correct science necessary to give good advice. For an insight into some of the newest science on the matter, here is this post from today:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2730564/posts
And this, from December 20, 2010:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2678741/posts
It is becoming evident that it is the type of calories we eat and not how much of them you can burn off.
Or where you’ve gone from a six-pack to a full keg.
Like in catastrophic anthropogenic global warmism?
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