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Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

Agnosto

Hahaha I hope you won that round. It even rhymes correctly!

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Sigvatr: Nah, but I'm claiming this policy would discourage excessive drinking.

You would have a hard time holding this up in a court of law. You'd have to prove that having been mugged was soley possible because you were drunk - and I have no idea how that's supposed to work.

Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

People could always still get treated through privately paid medical insurance if they want to, but if you've not got that, don't drink to excess.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

For that tiny amount of people, they would surely be able to prove such a problem to a doctor delegated by the government and then, if successful, go on as usual.

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Sigvatr: Nah, but I'm claiming this policy would discourage excessive drinking.

You would have a hard time holding this up in a court of law. You'd have to prove that having been mugged was soley possible because you were drunk - and I have no idea how that's supposed to work.

Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

People could always still get treated through privately paid medical insurance if they want to, but if you've not got that, don't drink to excess.

College kids with alcohol poisoning should just die then? Great idea! Thin the gene-pool!

 Da Boss wrote:


Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

You cannot just implement a law in a society. If people disagree with it, there are multiple ways to counter-work against it, i.e. by appealing to the European Human Rights court. And as stated before: you would not have the slightest chance to hold your case up.

 Strombones wrote:
Agnosto

Hahaha I hope you won that round. It even rhymes correctly!

I wish that I could take credit for that; a friend did it and unfortunately didn't win. :(

 d-usa wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I have to say that, by and large (no pun intended), I am also in favour of this measure so long as other incentives are in place such as added assistance for buying healthy food items, and possibly free consultations/exercise classes/information

As a fattie, that is able to work and used to hang as a firefighter for five years I might add , I agree as well. I think that benefits should always be tied to some attempt to get off benefits. I'm fine with benefits for not working as long as you are actively looking for work, stop trying and the benefit is gone. Benefits while you are going to school to get a better job instead of your minimum wage gig with education paid if fine with me (and I think the state makes that investment back with higher taxes from a higher income), but drop out and your benefits are gome. Treatment for obesity can be expensive and may involve a very multi-faceted approach (diet, medical, excercise) that could add costs. But a few years at a much higher cost to the state would be better than a lifetime of lower cost.

It's also an interesting combination of issues, obesity and substance abuse, with obesity quite often (with some exceptions) being a result of substance abuse as well. I think most people "choose" to be fat the same way they "choose" to have cirrhosis or "choose" to have no teeth. Food can be an addiction, and with obese people it frequently is. I'm not saying that to make excuses for myself and my fat bretheren, just pointing out that it often can be a complex combination of physical problems as well as a mental health component. But just like other addictions the person has to want to quit, although with food you can't ever really quit since you do kinda need it to stay alive. It's like telling a meth-addict that they just have to take a tiny bit of meth for the rest of their lives, but they are not allowed to quit or take too much.

I think what I am trying to say in my long rambling that I think it's a good idea, that some people need that kick in the rear, but that proponents need to realise that with substance abuse (especially food addiction) the treatment may continue long after the person is no longer fat and that I think for optimum benefit the state should make continued assistance available to keep them from falling back into benefit-land.

There are a few issues with the idea.

It's being proposed by the Tories(Conservative Party), and it's a huge steaming pile of crap. They said the new Work Programme would be focused on helping people into work, instead it's structured to give Jobcentre staff excuses to "sanction" people (read; take away benefits for anywhere from a few weeks to several months, leaving them destitute) and cut costs compared to the previous "back to work" schemes(which were moderately effective, while the Work Programme is demonstrably ineffective). They said the new Personal Independence Payments would make life easier for the disabled compared to the current system, but for the vast majority who were in receipt of the old Disability Living Allowance it means they will have less money to pay for carers, necessary home access work, transport etc, and for new claimants PIP is significantly harder to get. They claimed the previously-ATOS-run Work Capability Assessments were designed to accurately gauge the needs of the sick and disabled, so those in need of the most help would get easier access to it and those who had the potential to live a fuller life would be enabled to do so rather than just abandoning them on benefits for the rest of their lives, in reality it was a crude computerised tickbox-sheet administered by "health professionals" who were completely unqualified to assess most of the conditions they were judging, resulting in a system that declared terminal cancer patients on chemo, late-stage MS sufferers, people with severe autism, and people with bone disorders so severe they could barely stand as "fit for work", stripping them of disability benefits and forcing them onto Jobseekers Allowance(and thus making them subject to the Work Programme's sanctions regime). Oh yes, and then they changed the rules so that you no longer received disability while you were appealing an ATOS decision(2/3 of which were overturned at review months later), and now are considering charging people a fee if they want to make such an appeal. They claimed the "bedroom tax"(a nickname, essentially the policy docks your Housing Benefit if they judge you have "unused space", a definition which seemingly includes things like disabled people who have a spare room for a part-time carer, or divorced parents who have a small box-room with a bed for their kid to stay over on weekends) was about more efficient usage of our social housing stock, but neglected to mention that the reason a lot of people who didn't need an additional bedroom were placed in a two-bedroom home was that we don't have enough one-bedroom social housing because the bloody Tories sold it off in the 80's and neither Tory nor Labour governments since have built any more.

Every change to the benefits system being made by the present coalition government has been claimed prior to its implementation that the goal was to help people or make existing policies more effective, and the reality in every single bloody case is that their sole objective has been to cut the benefits bill by any means necessary, with no regard for whether the people being affected were in genuine need or not, and this will be no different. What's the most atrocious thing about this governments attempts to socially cleanse the poor and disabled from society is that it's predicated on a monstrous distortion of reality(the idea that there is some vast "moocher class" living it up on benefits - the rate of benefit fraud in this country is less than 1%, as low as 0.5% by some measures, it's a bloody myth) and on top of that, is a total failure because the coalition's other policies have resulted in such a large increase in the number of people claiming benefits that they can't use the new measures to sanction people off them again fast enough to keep up. In fact, the entire policy agenda of the coalition has been a failure - the justification for austerity was supposed to be that it would reduce the debt and deficit, and even if you accept the, to put it extremely politely, questionable idea that those are the only or indeed the main measures of the success of a national economy, under the current government the deficit has not come down and the debt has gotten bigger. This is not about helping people, or saving money, it is about class warfare - a group of privately-educated millionaire politicians carving the state apart piece by piece and selling it off to their cronies in the private sector; just look at the NHS "reforms"(read: privatisation), something like 2/3 of the politicians involved in voting these "reforms" have interests in the private healthcare sector.

It's a con, and this is just the latest part of that. They've played out the moochers, scroungers, "strivers vs skivers" rhetoric for as long as they can, and now they have to find ways to make people accept the next round of cuts to public services and benefits(which aren't actually "cuts", just transfers of wealth from the public purse to their private sector pals), well, who better to make into the next targets than "fatties"? It's perfect, even better than trying to get the public to hate people with mental disorders - those are invisible, but people still have some level of sympathy. Even people who don't buy into the bollocks that poverty is some kind of character defect finds it easy to believe the bollocks that the clinically obese can just "cut back on the cheeseburgers, tubbo" if they really want to, and while the public are basking in the self-satisfied abuse which will doubtless soon be masquerading as journalism in our national press, a nice safe target found to blame for society's ills, the coalition will be dumping tens of thousands of addicts off benefits and back into the criminal behaviour the benefits were supposed to curb, and which in the long run costs us a lot more, both society in the abstract sense and the government in the fiscal sense.

 Da Boss wrote:
If you're out for a few drinks with friends, your blood alcohol level should not be high enough to disbar you from treatment. It's not a complicated idea that you want to separate those who drink responsibly from those who get legless, black out drunk.

Dreadclaw: If she's over the limit that has been set, then yeah, she gets treated the same as everyone else. The limit would be high though, as I've said in every one of my posts. Alcohol costs the NHS up to 6 billion pounds a year. That is not an insignificant cost that can just be ignored.

So innocent victims of crime are now made victims again by the NHS. So what do you propose the legal limit be for your scheme?

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

You cannot just implement a law in a society. If people disagree with it, there are multiple ways to counter-work against it, i.e. by appealing to the European Human Rights court. And as stated before: you would not have the slightest chance to hold your case up.

Oh yeah, sure. This is a law I would like to see, but I have no expectation that I would ever see it. People would kick up murders because they want to be able to get blind drunk and have the state look after them- it's just all those OTHER people that are getting too much in "entitlements". Not sure how the European Court of Human rights could put a stop to it though. People would get treated, they'd just be expected to pay for their treatment instead of having the NHS foot the bill.

I can see my suggestion is as popular as it ever is Last time I brought this up I got into a pretty big row with two close friends, so Dakka OT is actually a more welcoming place to the idea

Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible. The limit would be pretty high, not being a specialist on blood alcohol level I couldn't say how high, but much higher than those for drink driving, for example.

 Da Boss wrote:
Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible.

So who exactly are the victims of drinking to excess?

Bran Dawri wrote:
Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

Rare, treatable, and sometimes thyroid issues are caused by childhood obesity, which makes the obesity worse, which makes the thyroid problems worse, which makes the obesity worse... and so on. So, sure, it's a more complicated case, but it's no reason to think they shouldn't try to get healthier. You just need a bit different treatments.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible.

So who exactly are the victims of drinking to excess?

In the case of the UK, the rest of the tax payers who pay for their medical bills through the NHS, who put up with their antisocial behaviour on the streets and the crime committed by them. And to an extent the drinker themselves is a victim of their own irresponsibility.

In other countries with private healthcare, it is less of an issue because drink to excess and you've got to cover yourself anyway.

 Sigvatr wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Mmm, there are also people overweight who cannot help it. Thyroid gland thingie, and I believe some other actual medical conditions as well. What will happen to their benefits in this well-intentioned but possibly misguided quest to get people healthy?

For that tiny amount of people, they would surely be able to prove such a problem to a doctor delegated by the government and then, if successful, go on as usual.

More than you think:

PCOS
thyroid
diabetes T1 & T2
general endocrine
depression
side effects of medicines

Also what happens when we find the obesity gene in 10 years and all these people sue the government?

 Ketara wrote:
I am in favour of the general concept, but fear that many people will inevitably suffer unjustly due to it being conceived with fairness in mind, and physically written and implemented in such a way that hurts people. As with most Tory cuts to the welfare system, if the Atos debacle is anything to show.

Yep, you do have to be careful. We were doing BMI's at work and a lot of the Polynesians were coming up as overweight when it was muscle that was putting them over. They didn't have the fat to lose.

The "obesity gene" would have to make an obesity protein, which there is no evidence for.

Obesity is influenced by genetic factors but it's unlikely to be strictly genetically controlled apart from in a few edge cases.

And I think it would be hard to sue the government if the government was acting in good faith and did not know about the existence of any such gene.

PCOS: Cannot be fully cured, but what is recommended to greatly compensate? Healthy diet, exercise. Check.

Hypothyriodism: supplementals and, again, healthy diet.

Diabetes T1&T2: Medication and...healthy diet.

Depression: Uhm? Depression already is a sickness that's covered by health services...

Again, all this debate about whether this or that condition makes being obese justifiable is besides the point; these changes are not about helping people or saving money, they're about giving people an easy target to hate while the Tories undertake an ideologically-motivated reduction of the state, and in the end whether a person is obese because they eat too much completely of their own free will or because they have a legitimate medical condition won't matter - the policy will screw them regardless. Just as it didn't matter to ATOS if you could barely walk or would be dead in a couple of months, it didn't matter to the government if you genuinely needed the additional care that DLA provided and so on.

 Da Boss wrote:
In the case of the UK, the rest of the tax payers who pay for their medical bills through the NHS, who put up with their antisocial behaviour on the streets and the crime committed by them. And to an extent the drinker themselves is a victim of their own irresponsibility.

In other countries with private healthcare, it is less of an issue because drink to excess and you've got to cover yourself anyway.

That presupposes that everyone who binge drinks commits crime, or is antisocial. What about those who commit no crime or antisocial behaviour, but are assaulted?
So do occasional binge drinkers cost the NHS more than they contribute?

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


Well, we're talking about changing the law so that the NHS has no liability to treat people who are over the limit in terms of alcohol.

You cannot just implement a law in a society. If people disagree with it, there are multiple ways to counter-work against it, i.e. by appealing to the European Human Rights court. And as stated before: you would not have the slightest chance to hold your case up.

Oh yeah, sure. This is a law I would like to see, but I have no expectation that I would ever see it. People would kick up murders because they want to be able to get blind drunk and have the state look after them- it's just all those OTHER people that are getting too much in "entitlements". Not sure how the European Court of Human rights could put a stop to it though. People would get treated, they'd just be expected to pay for their treatment instead of having the NHS foot the bill.

I can see my suggestion is as popular as it ever is Last time I brought this up I got into a pretty big row with two close friends, so Dakka OT is actually a more welcoming place to the idea

Dreadclaw: Drinking to excess is not an innocent act, it is socially irresponsible. The limit would be pretty high, not being a specialist on blood alcohol level I couldn't say how high, but much higher than those for drink driving, for example.

How about twice the legal drink driving limit? That's the current definition of binge drinking, according to the NHS.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
In the case of the UK, the rest of the tax payers who pay for their medical bills through the NHS, who put up with their antisocial behaviour on the streets and the crime committed by them. And to an extent the drinker themselves is a victim of their own irresponsibility.

In other countries with private healthcare, it is less of an issue because drink to excess and you've got to cover yourself anyway.

That presupposes that everyone who binge drinks commits crime, or is antisocial. What about those who commit no crime or antisocial behaviour, but are assaulted?
So do occasional binge drinkers cost the NHS more than they contribute?

Absolutely no idea. I think you misunderstand the intent I have here. I'm not interested in what's fair or just particularly. Binge drinking and excessive drunkeness are harmful and as a whole, society would be better off without them. The provision of free medical treatment is a potential lever that can be used to disincentivise the behaviour. I prefer it to for example, harsher penalties on public drunkeness, because prison costs the state more money and takes potentially productive people out of society. Instead, to tell people that yeah, you can do that if you want, but there will be no safety blanket for you if you do, is something I'd at least like to see tried.

Drinking to excess is fundamentally antisocial in a country with completely socialised medicine, though not severely so.

 Da Boss wrote:
Absolutely no idea. I think you misunderstand the intent I have here. I'm not interested in what's fair or just particularly.

That much of your plan is more than abundantly clear.

You are so enjoyable to communicate with Dreadclaw. The way you engage only selectively with points and use rhetorical questions as a weapon.

 Da Boss wrote:
You are so enjoyable to communicate with Dreadclaw. The way you engage only selectively with points and use rhetorical questions as a weapon.

I would appreciate if you would stick with the discussion, not the person with whom you are having the discussion.

 Da Boss wrote:

Absolutely no idea. I think you misunderstand the intent I have here. I'm not interested in what's fair or just particularly. Binge drinking and excessive drunkeness are harmful and as a whole, society would be better off without them. The provision of free medical treatment is a potential lever that can be used to disincentivise the behaviour. I prefer it to for example, harsher penalties on public drunkeness, because prison costs the state more money and takes potentially productive people out of society. Instead, to tell people that yeah, you can do that if you want, but there will be no safety blanket for you if you do, is something I'd at least like to see tried.

Drinking to excess is fundamentally antisocial in a country with completely socialised medicine, though not severely so.

So why not execute people who excessively drink? No more cost for the state!

Hyperbole, yes, but...come on. You're not arguing here, you're pushing an agenda bar common sense. Drinking excessively isn't a crime and you're trying to criminalize it on top of seriously going that far to blame drunk people for being mugged. By the very same logic, women who wear short skirts should not be helped by the police because they asked for it? And after all, police investigations are even more expensive...

If you want to actually do something useful against excessive drinking, then push for higher taxes. Period. Hurting the wallet is the only way to make people rethink their ways. If a shot suddenly costs 15$ instead of 8$, people will think twice before getting wasted. Or if a sixpack of beer suddenly costs 25$ instead of 13$. More taxes, less drinking, everyone wins.

If these overweight people are claiming ESA (more likely than PIP) then they have already been seeking treatment from their doctor; you need to see your GP, get sick notes, send these to the Job Centre and then make a claim for ESA.

Then you get to the assessment and it goes like this: Letter turns up from ATOS and you open it (-1 point), you read it (-1 point) and you turn up for the appointment (-1 point). You manage to get to the very well hidden assessment centre (-1 point) and read the sign on the door that says, "press buzzer" (-1 point), press the buzzer (-1 point) hear the voice say "who's there?" very, very quietly (-1 point), get through the door (-1 point). Go to the desk (-1 point) sign in (-1 point) follow the instruction to sit and wait (-1 point), sit down unaided (-1 point), read a magazine on the table whilst they watch you through cameras for twenty minutes (-1 point), and if you manage to wait those twenty minutes (-1 point). Answer when they finally call your turn (-1 point). By the time you see the 'Health Care Professional' you've already failed your assessment for ESA.

To me, this measure is just more rhetoric to get people wound up about dole bludgers, and worse, fat dole bludgers because they (all 1830 of the people who claim benefits due to obesity) are an easy target.

Same as the Bedroom Tax, supposedly for having unused rooms but even if you fill the place up then you're probably liable for a non-dependent deduction instead which amounts to the same thing. And how much has all this saved for the government? About 400 million, the exact same amount of money George Osborne has just overspent on the interest on the 'hugely successful' Pensioner bonds so we know exactly where all the 'savings' went, strait to well of pensioners in order to secure the Grey Vote, because we know all those idle, feckless, dole bludging scroungers all vote Labour don't we?

edited, motyak

 Soteks Prophet wrote:

diabetes T1

Sorry, but Type 1 Diabetes is NOT an obesity disease. My younger brother had Type One, and I can tell you point blank, he was the opposite of "fat" in every sense of the word.

Type 1 is purely genetic. It causes obesity in the same way that water causes hydration. Whether a person with Type 1 diabetes is obese or not, is entirely dependent on the person's lifestyle and choices.

 agnosto wrote:

 Strombones wrote:
Agnosto

Hahaha I hope you won that round. It even rhymes correctly!

I wish that I could take credit for that; a friend did it and unfortunately didn't win. :(

Bah! Was too perfect. Ya'll must have some very clever Cards Against Humanity players!

My only hope is that the rest of the world/dakka knows about this very awesome game.

Relapse wrote:
Yep, you do have to be careful. We were doing BMI's at work and a lot of the Polynesians were coming up as overweight when it was muscle that was putting them over. They didn't have the fat to lose.

As an aside, today I learned that Polynesians have, on average, more muscle mass that non-Polynesians. .... why is that? Honest question.

All that rowing from island to island and evolution.