What's your resting heart rate?

[Crankin]

+1 on the insurance.
Given my experience here, with our "Romney Care," I can't say anything bad. Almost all of my clients are getting therapy because of this insurance; it's a behavioral health initiative for families who have this plan. What I don't like is that if you are a working person and your employer doesn't offer insurance, what the state finds for you can still be pretty expensive.
I have mixed feelings about the issues raised in the NYT article. I wouldn't have a problem, because my BMI is 20, I don't smoke, or have any of the other risk factors. But, I know how hard it is to quit smoking. On the other hand, I kind of do feel strongly that people need to take more responsibility for their own health, but we need to help them. Behavioral change is extremely hard and unless most people get support, it's not going to happen. And using one thing as a measure of good health is just dumb.

[Bike Chick]

This health insurance trend is a bit scary. My BMI is high but my resting heart rate is low and I work very hard to keep my bp and cholesterol counts low. I would be really upset if I didn't get a discount and the skinny little coworker that smokes 2 packs of cigarettes a day did. Perhaps they should devise a fitness exam for the discounts and not rely on where you fell on the chart.

Two weeks ago I made a trip to the er when I got my finger in the way of my embroidery machine needle. To look at me you wouldn't think I was very fit. I'm 53, gray-headed and 10 pounds overweight. When the nurse took my bp and pulse (it was 44) she asked if my pulse was always this low and took it a second time to be sure.

[shootingstar]

So in the U.S., it has always been or recent trend on using certain health measurements by private health insurers for discounts/premium payments?

The reality is that a very healthy person could be suddenly quite sick with a terminal, non-curable disease. So what happens?

My father is not overweight (never was, in fact underweight for several decades), no cardiopulmonary nor respiratory problems at all. He is 82, but has prostate cancer. Not curable at his age. He is not "penalized" by the public health care system for having cancer which of course is not caused by smoking. (He stopped smoking before he married my mother.)

He has never taken his own heart rate and wouldn't know it. But his blood pressure has tended to be slow as diagnosed by doctor over the years.

This is why I can't get just measure my heart rate as my only indcator of health, there are real life examples in my own family, what type of lifestyle and diet long term one adopts to have overall good health.

(And when a terminal disease strikes, at least one is not suffering from multiple complications because of other health problems.)

[tzvia]

I have a BP monitor available to me, and use a Polar HR watch during exercise, and have measured my HR at rest (while watching TV) at around 49~50. Before I took up cycling again in 2008, after stopping in 2002, it hovered in the low 60s at rest. My BP at that time was in the 140s/low 90s. When I last checked it was 117/79. So I guess that between loosing about 30 lbs, exercising, and eating somewhat healthier, I am going in the right direction, at least as much as these things matter.

Being 52 and still about 20 lbs overweight (I am an apple- used to have a Goodyear truck tire around the middle, now it is more like a couple of MTB 2.1s.) Working on it but it has been hard to get those last 20 off. I don't dwell on the numbers, (the BP meter is my mother's, she bought it when she was advised she was borderline high BP), but it is interesting to see how they changed as I got myself into better shape.

Health insurance companies really don't have a much better way to quantify rates- even if we all got whole body MRIs, there would be risks and chance that fluctuate with hereditary and exposure/lifestyle factors. BP, HR and bloodwork are better than darts or guessing, but in the end it all feels like an educated guess.

I've known people who were 'the picture of health' just keel over with a brain hemorrhage. I've known people who were overweight, smoked, had high pressure jobs and lived to ripe old age. I've had relatives told they had 6 months, live 20 years. The science of health is really very interesting, as it involves so much chance.

[NbyNW]

So in the U.S., it has always been or recent trend on using certain health measurements by private health insurers for discounts/premium payments?

IME it comes into play more for life insurance rates. But DH and I have not yet reached a time where this would have been an issue for us in applying for health insurance, so maybe others have had different experiences.

We've bought individual insurance a couple of times while in between jobs and they will quote us premium/deductible packages based on primary and no. of dependants before we have even sent our health questionnaires in.

The larger issue is whether you have a pre-existing condition that could get you denied coverage entirely (but after that there may be state programs that you can qualify for). DH really goofed on this once: he indicated that I had a spinal cord injury when all I had was a fracture to two vertebrae. So I got denied coverage. I had to spend a whole day on the phone clearing that one up!

[NbyNW]

I have mixed feelings on nationalizing insurance. On the one hand, the peace of mind that you are covered whether or not you are working is immense; On the other, I feel like I was already paying for health care when I had it through my employer; the money just didn't flow through my hands first. So I feel like it's just one big giant accounting problem that Americans will never agree on.

It was interesting to be living in Alberta while the health care debate was going on a couple of years ago. For one thing, a lot of Americans seem to think that Canada's health care system is national. If I understand right (please correct me if I'm wrong, Shootingstar!), what they have is a federal mandate that the provinces and territories provide health care insurance. So, you're covered but your insurance does not travel with you if you move to another province/territory or even just go on vacation. DH's company paid extra for us to have travel-related health insurance. I suppose if you don't have extra insurance you can always submit a claim but I don't know how successful people are with that.

Delivery of services can vary greatly depending on your geographical location. There are tons of Drs. in the big cities. Smaller towns struggle to attract and retain Drs. Even though Alberta has a perennial shortage of doctors, they don't make it easy for doctors to come from outside of the province to work; on several occasions we met experienced doctors (both men and women) who followed a spouse to Alberta from another part of Canada and it sounded like the requirements for them to get licensed to practice in Alberta were onerous.

I was never able to find a PCP in Edmonton. I asked both locals and newcomers for recommendations and everyone directed me to the listings on the Alberta Health website. The only Drs. taking new patients were at the public clinic where there is no guarantee of seeing the same person from one visit to the next. I started wondering whether having a PCP was a privilege reserved for locals. But as it turns out even a lot of my local friends had trouble getting a PCP. I could go on, but this post is getting long enough.

OTOH, some of the public health initiatives were very impressive. Getting a flu shot was a piece of cake, even during the whole H1N1 supply thing. I had a friend who lost 45 lbs, on her way to losing 60, through an experimental weight loss program with Alberta Health.

[shootingstar]

I believe there is a federal arrangement with provinces for transfer of money to the provinces for each provincial public health insurance program.

But that's only part of the story. Yes, I agree there are provincial differences of what residents pay (or not pay), availability of doctors, etc.

I've lived in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta. For whatever reason there is a problem in Alberta of immediately securing a family doctor as a new resident....it's probably a combination of doctor shortage, more women doctors who choose not to work punishing long hrs. (my sister is a living example with 2 young children. Now up to 40% graduating med students are women in Canada.). But there are other reasons.

BUT in Alberta for wierd (and stupid) reasons a resident does not have to pay a quarterly govn't imposed premium which is the opposite of B.C. (and I think Ontario. But I would have to ask.) This has been in effect for last few years. I doubt that is helpful to provincial budget on health care, but this province is more "selfish", in terms of its social support programs, etc. in general.

Alberta is the only province that doesn't have provincial sales tax...personally I just think it's stupid. Tax payments from the oil firms could never possibily cover our provincial budget.

I just see less sophistication and social services advocacy in Alberta. Voices of marginalized and weak/sick are quite muffled, compared to Toronto or Vancouver. And Calgary now has 1+ million people due to rapid growth in oil and energy sectors.

Yea, I guess I better get on the waiting list for family doctor..


In B.C. a single person pays abit over $56.00CAN every 3 months to the goverment. So it's VERY reasonable to have access to physician care. Of course, with additional payments to an insurer (ie. Blue Cross), one can stay in the hospital longer, get their own private room, etc. These top up services vary across different provinces in Canada. I am aware of this only because I've worked for various employers and knew what additional health benefits I could pay into.


In Vancouver I just merely dropped to my family doctor down the street with an appointment of course. Sure there were line-ups (as there are in big cities with many people) ...but it wasn't as difficult to find a family doctor with several days advance appointment booking for first time.

May I explain the level of quality of health care that is possible if you are in the right province, better city in Canada:

My father is under the care of specialists at Canada's top cancer research hospital in Toronto. He was never discriminated, never put back somewhere in the lineup for appointments because he is 82 and has cancer, which is terminal/non-curable now. He has appointments every few months, spend time, etc. He takes drugs. I have not heard of my parents charged much (if any) for these highly specialized drugs.


Sorry for my rant. But there are long time Albertans who want less tax, it is a province with big C Conservative for many decades, etc. Well, guess what: this is the situation that's going on right now. Alberta is abit like Canada's version of Texas in a down-scaled way, probably.

So does all this mean I should start taking my heart rate. For me it means doing simple stuff often, maybe not perfectly....cycling, eating ok, etc.

[NbyNW]

Sorry for my rant. But there are long time Albertans who want less tax, it is a province with big C Conservative for many decades, etc. Well, guess what: this is the situation that's going on right now. Alberta is abit like Canada's version of Texas in a down-scaled way, probably.

So does all this mean I should start taking my heart rate. For me it means doing simple stuff often, maybe not perfectly....cycling, eating ok, etc.

No problem -- I knew you would have an interesting perspective on this since you have lived in several provinces and still have family all over. What I don't get about Alberta is that they are always talking about how wealthy the province is, yet they can't get their priorities straight and solve some of the problems that you outlined.

FWIW, I think the oil companies absolutely could fork over more $$, for all the environmental damage they cause that potentially impacts public health.