Was in London a few months ago and saw the most obscure and thought provoking documentary in as many years, called “Tax the Fat” by Giles Coren. The young, slim fellow on the TV was charismatic and articulate, he had an important point to make and made no bones about couching it in a comedic fashion. His point was succinct and direct, fat people should be taxed accordingly. Coren advanced his argument on the controversial issue on the Daily Mail.
While he claims that fat people place more of a financial burden on healthcare, he neglected to provide creditable sources to back his position. (Making statements regarding the low discipline and morals of those with categorical morbid obesity may trigger explicable backlash unless supported by a renown institution of medical science.) Nonetheless, he made some valid points. Fat people are treated alike and respond similarly regardless of where they live. They require special accommodation, and usually at the expense of the populace, and unabashed about requesting special treatment due to their weight. The problem is most obvious when you’re on a 10 hour flight and the person next to you is spilling over to your seat and making it nearly impossible for you to sit comfortably. Less obvious is how your medical insurance seems to increase every year when your visits to the doctor has not increased in the last five years. What have you done to deserve the increase?
Fat people have excuses for their weight that ranges from slower metabolism to thyroid problems. The documentary guy dispelled these myths by interviewing a nurse practitioner to explain whether these excuses were just that, excuses. She concurred that the inherent problem with overweight people is that they simply eat too much. No one person has a faster or slower metabolism than another. Discipline and exercise eliminate the majority of health risks associated with weight gain. Simply put, fat people need to eat less and exercise more.
There were more said in this documentary, but I was preoccupied with the uncontrollable laughter emanating from the pit of my stomach. After picking myself up from the floor, I discussed the matter further with Hubby, who was adamant that legislation should be passed to execute this forward thinking business of curbing healthcare costs. It’s fundamentally unfair to require moderately slim people who rarely utilize the medical system to have to bear the burden of paying more because some people do not have the same discipline to curb their appetite. We blame the media for promoting super size meals, conventional science for not creating a slim fast pill, and sore joints for not exercising – but we rarely blame ourselves for not controlling our food intake.
The documentary guy was not jesting about this fact, he persuasively demonstrated the danger of not exercising and the need for a quick fix. So the only solution is to tax the
fatties. We charge smokers more, polluters are fined, speeders are jailed, so why not tax those that burden our healthcare system? While I was not completely against this novel idea, a part of me prefers to have the option of becoming fat one day and not having to pay taxes for my bonus self. Why should I have to pay taxes twice, first when I purchase that extra pound of Krispy Kreme donut, and again when it transforms itself onto my thighs? That’s simply unfair, I should only be charged once for the pleasure of injecting myself with glucose. Lets tax the skinnies because they make the fatties look healthy.
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