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How so? The argument is that eventually everybody dies of something, so avoiding one fatal disease only shifts your death to another disease at some point in th
by hughprime 17y ago
How so? The argument is that eventually everybody dies of something, so avoiding one fatal disease only shifts your death to another disease at some point in the future.
I really think it's quite likely that fat people, on average, cost less in health care over their lives than thin people. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but every person who dies suddenly of a heart attack saves an awful lot of money by not dying of cancer, or worse still some degenerative disease.
- dasil003 17y agoNothing wrong with the basic gist, but read closely the statement I quoted. Just because something takes a long time to kill you doesn't mean its treatment is expensive. Similarly, just because something is expensive to treat doesn't mean enough people have it to make it worth targetting from an overall cost perspective. That's all I was saying.
- eru 17y agoAnd if you get less deaths per person-years, you might also save money (per person-year).
- mhb 17y agoDiabetes - blindness, circulation problems, infections, amputations. It's not at all clear that health care for fat people would be less than for thin people.