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Japan Imposes "Fine On Fat"

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 24, @10:35AM
from the fat-man-vs.-the-state dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have mandatory obesity checks (video link) for all their employees and employees' family members over the age of 40, CNN reports. If the employee or family member is deemed obese, and does not lose the extra fat soon, their employer faces large fines. The legislated upper limit for the waistline is 33.5" for men, and 35.5" for women. Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government? By comparison, the average waistline in America in 2005 was 39 inches for men, 37 inches for women."

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  • frosty piss. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24, @10:37AM (#23916691)
    if it gets rid of that fat fuck CowboyNeal, I'm all for it.

  • Do you smoke?
    Do you drink?
    Drug tests?

    Any of this sound familiar in a survey from your insurance application or work orientation pack?

    • Re:already here (Score:5, Insightful)

      by daveatneowindotnet (1309197) on Tuesday June 24, @10:45AM (#23916859)
      Agreed, to be honest this is just bad marketing by the Japanese government. They are being too honest. If they merely raised everyone's taxes and then offered tax relief to those who stayed below these requirements they would be seen as "helping" their citizens stay healthy. Side note, the article is being just rabble-rousing by comparing waistlines considering that Americans are so much taller on average than Japanese it makes sense that they would be proportionally larger in waist size.

      • Your fat costs me money (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Brain-Fu (1274756) on Tuesday June 24, @11:01AM (#23917147) Homepage Journal
        Even with private health insurance, those who live unhealthy lifestyles have the net effect of increasing insurance premiums for everyone.

        The insurance companies maintain profitability by selecting price points that set them ahead, given all of the expenses they are likely to incur. The more fat people they have on their plans, the more likely they are to spend money on all the fat-related medical issues that arise, so the more they must charge.

        While it may be unfair to target fat people (or smokers or drinkers or what-have-you), isn't it equally unfair to make healthy people pay a lot of extra money to support the unhealthy lifestyles of their neighbors?

        As usual, this door swings both ways, and it doesn't matter whether the health care is universal or privatized...any kind of medical insurance raises these issues.

        • While it may be unfair to target fat people (or smokers or drinkers or what-have-you), isn't it equally unfair to make healthy people pay a lot of extra money to support the unhealthy lifestyles of their neighbors?

          So, what if I have good genes.... and you have bad? If we are willing to open up the can of worms of risk assignment, then why should we ignore science and not surcharge those people who have doomed genetics? What, exactly, entitles people with weaker genes to a health discount at the expense of someone else?

        • Re:Your fat costs me money (Score:5, Informative)

          by daveatneowindotnet (1309197) on Tuesday June 24, @11:17AM (#23917479)
          I find your lack of, lack of, faith disturbing. Insurance companies are thieves, they are the one business who's business model relies on not providing the service they promise. Case in point, Insurance Company A takes a beating in the stock market, to raise profits they raise rates on doctors malpractice insurance, then claim that it is because of lawsuits, for you know, malpractice. Insurance Company B is operating beyond their current means, instead of ceasing purchase of mahogany office furniture, use faulty statistics to target people with higher disposable incomes for auto insurance rate increases, (males around 22-28). I'm not saying government control would be better or that it is unfair for people to pay for an other's lifestyle. But if the problem is price of insurance, lets start by being honest why it is so high.

      • Re:already here (Score:5, Informative)

        by truthsearch (249536) on Tuesday June 24, @11:07AM (#23917255) Homepage Journal

        Side note, the article is being just rabble-rousing by comparing waistlines considering that Americans are so much taller on average than Japanese it makes sense that they would be proportionally larger in waist size.

        I was thinking the same thing until I looked it up [wikipedia.org]. On average men in the US are 1.5 inches taller and women are 1.2 inches taller. That's not a big enough difference to expect our waist sizes to be so much larger (all else being equal).

  • One does not follow the other... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nodrogluap (165820) * on Tuesday June 24, @10:38AM (#23916707) Homepage

    Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual
    health regulations imposed on us by the government?

    The question is specious: there are dozens of countries with public health care, but they don't have such crazy restrictions (including your neighbour, Canada). I chalk it up to a Japanese culture that accepts such a standard. And don't give me the fat-people-will-cost-me-more in a public system argument, because they are costing you more in a private system, unless fatter people at your work pay more for their insurance plan...

    • Re:One does not follow the other... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sm62704 (957197) on Tuesday June 24, @11:08AM (#23917277) Homepage Journal

      There are those who say smokers cost society money and the same busybodies will talk about how fat people, too, cost money because of the health risks, but it's bunk. It's based on the stupidly false premise that one can live forever. The reason it's stupid is illustrated by my late granmother and her late son, my uncle.


      Uncle Bill smoked four packs of Kools every day since he was about twelve. He contracted emphysema and died in his early sixties.


      Uncle Bill, a WWII veteran, worked all his life and paid into Social Security from its inception until his death, and never collected a single SS benefit. He never went to a doctor on Mediacre's dime either - he didn't live long enough. He went to the hospital and died expensively, like everybody else.


      Grandma, a healthy nonsmoker, collected Social Security for almost forty years, going to the doctor almost every week, paid for by medicare. At age 99 she fell down in the nursinng home and broke her hip, spent a week in the hospital and died expensively, like everybody else.


      Smokers and fat people don't cost the medical system money; it's only the living that go to doctors.


      The way to solve Social Security is to get all the geezers to start smoking and going to Burger King again. Dead men don't collect Social Security.


      To say that smokers and fat people cost society is a big fat stinking baldfaced lie. Being a fat smoker doesn't send you to the doctor more often than thin nonsmokers, it kills you.

      • Re:One does not follow the other... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jorghis (1000092) on Tuesday June 24, @10:50AM (#23916953)

        I never understood why this was so unpopular. We tax the beejebus out of cigarretes because it is an easy way for politicians to raise taxes without making everyone mad. Eating tons of junk food over the course of your life isnt much better than smoking a pack a day.

        I'm not saying I support a tax on junk food, but I cant see how people can support taxing lower income folks who go through a pack a day but not this.

        • Re:One does not follow the other... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Free the Cowards (1280296) on Tuesday June 24, @11:01AM (#23917151)

          That's what happens when you buy "insurance" to cover every little thing.

          Insurance should cover catastrophic, unforseeable events. You buy car insurance so that you have coverage if you get t-boned by a semi. You don't buy insurance to cover your oil changes. It would be absurd, and if everybody bought oil-change insurance it would drive the cost through the roof. Yet this is what everybody expects from health "insurance", and guess what happened, the costs got driven through the roof.

        • "We don't know how much it would, but studies from cigarette taxes show that increases costs decrease consumption of even highly desirable things."

          So fewer and fewer people are getting what they desire, because other anonymous people don't desire it and would like to force them into a position where they can't afford their desires! What an idiotic and indefensible notion.

          "Obesity increases fuel consumption -- the obese eat more (more food transport and production fuel use) and weigh more (more transport costs in themselves)."

          If they can afford the food, who's to tell them they should be allowed to eat it. What happened to "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness"?

          "And yes, their health care costs us -- we should be getting some of that back."

          Only if you choose to be part of the system. The difference between that and a publicly-funded system is that you have no choice.

          "A small tax..."

          It is not the size that matters. Forcibly taking away someone's productivity (in the form of money) is no different from theft.

  • wow.. seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WiglyWorm (1139035) on Tuesday June 24, @10:39AM (#23916737)
    While "big boned" is a complete cop out, there are people with naturally larger waists... or worse yet, hormonal/glandular issues...
  • http://billstclair.com/DoingFreedom/000623/df.0600.fa.lipidleggin.html [billstclair.com] Written in 1978...scary and well worth reading (it's a short story, won't take long to read)

  • Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SatanicPuppy (611928) * <SatanicpuppyNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 24, @10:41AM (#23916761) Journal

    Well wow, that's just dumb. Didn't they read that smokers and fat people cost the government less thank skinny people? [iht.com]. The study was done by the Dutch, and their healthcare is mandatory private (like people are talking about for the US) supplemented by socialized healthcare for people who are elderly or unable to otherwise function, so I'd think they'd have a pretty good idea of what the costs are.
    _
    Sure, the smokers and fat people have more health problems, but they have the decency to drop dead and not linger on the government dime, senile and incontinent, for a few extra decades.
    _
    I try to keep healthy, but when I hit the point where I'm not enjoying life much any more, I'm eating whatever the hell I want, taking up heroin. I'll be mainlining viagra II, and having sex with the kind of scary women that'd have sex with me! You see these articles coming out of Florida about old guys getting arrested for trying to buy drugs, just for the hell of it, and I don't understand what the problem is. This society is so fricking weird; god forbid you threaten your own ability to live to 110.
    _
    Life is one of those things where it's really about quality, not quantity. //Sorry about the stupid dashes. Goddamn system isn't taking my paragraph breaks.

  • So, when do they extend this to a minimum female bust line?

    If you don't have at least a 34C, your employer provided insurance will mandate a boob job.

    I'm thinking the gov't inspector position on that law will be a highly coveted spot.

  • Foreign workers? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rinisari (521266) on Tuesday June 24, @10:43AM (#23916819) Homepage Journal

    Does this apply to foreign workers? For instance, if I were to go work in Japan for a year or two after I'm 40, would my employer be fined if I didn't shrink my 37 to a 33.5?

  • What about sumo wrestling? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tdvaughan (582870) on Tuesday June 24, @10:45AM (#23916849) Homepage
    I had the impression this sport was hugely popular over there (got that from reading Freakonomics). Will they make an exception for wrestlers?

  • Weird if it's true. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407) on Tuesday June 24, @10:45AM (#23916857) Homepage

    How can you have a single upper-limit on waist sizes? Are all people in Japan the same height or are short people allowed to be fatter than tall ones?

    And how is the employer really responsible for their employees' weight? OK sure, there's going to be a bit of correllation between the general health attitude at your job and your own weight and from what I understand there's more of a culture for this thing in Japan but it still seems like a big leap to make in what a company is responsible for and subsequently what an employee has to answer to his employer about. Can constantly fat people be fired for costing their company too much in fines?

  • A more darwinist approach (Score:5, Funny)

    by oldspewey (1303305) on Tuesday June 24, @10:49AM (#23916947)

    How about some kind of mandatory test (every couple years or so) in which people are placed in various life-threatening situations involving wild animals, obstacle courses, etc.?

    Those who exhibit a reasonable level of fitness would have a reasonable chance of evading death, while those who "let themselves go" are much more likely to end up as food for some kind of large carnivore or as feedstock for an industrial wood chipper.

    Have the whole thing take place in some kind of a large controlled environment with lots of cameras and audio pickups, then sell advertising rights to the 24/7 broadcast of all the mayhem.

    All upside. No downside

  • Athletes??? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mini_razor (1306073) on Tuesday June 24, @11:04AM (#23917189)
    Surely that counts out virtually most athletes in sports such as Weightlifting, Rugby Union, Shotput, Discus and many many more sports in which the atheletes are likely to be semi pro and have to have a 9 - 5 to help support themselves financially. Let alone Sumo Wrestling which is what football is to us Brits! Thats real football by the way to all you yanks :-p. You can be very healthy and very muscular and have a waist well above 33.5, I know a guy whose a semi professional Rugby Union player who has a 42 inch waist and a 55 inch chest, and is fitter than 99% of people on the street! It should be done on proper BMI (Body Mass Index), not including just height and weight as most do, but a real BMI includes skin fold measurements and takes into account percentage body fat and needs to be carried out by a qualified professional for the results to be accurate. If your gonna introduce a law which has monetary fines attatched to it at least make it fair!

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