Quote Originally Posted by goldfinch View Post
Frankly, I think that we should have national health insurance, paid through our taxes, but that isn't a popular position these days.

Given that it is so hard to maintain weight loss, the number of factors that go into weight gain, including genetic factors, my opinion is that a punitive charge is not going to help.

Here is an interesting article on the issue of charging people different rates, depending on whether they are obese, or smokers, or the like: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/he...pagewanted=all
+1, on all of it.
My mom's new insurance (which sucks) has the premiums set by I believe a combination of BMI, cholesterol and some other things, but primarily BMI. (Of course, BMI means nothing at the level of an individual, but we knew that.)
No idea what my resting HR is, but the last time I had it looked at (ER), it was around 65-70bpm...probably not my resting HR!