However, that’s 2 of 50 states.

Bridey, one opinion was stated on universal health care. That doesn’t automatically make this a “lefty” blog. As you can see by the comments, everybody is given a chance to express his or her opinion too.

One of my other coworkers rows as a hobby. She has a size 16 top and a size 6 bottom and a borderline obese BMI.

I have a BMI of something like 31, but I run three miles in under 24 minutes and lift weights four times a week. The size-14 jeans I buy fall off my waist and fit my squatter’s thighs, but just barely.

The only two people I can think of that might fit the government’s recommendations for BMI are both marathoners, both men, both middle-aged, and both scary-skinny. We’re all quite fit on my unit–I’m the only one who’s overweight, per se–but all of us have BMIs in the unhealthy to obese range.

*sigh*

It would be worth it, to be measured and tested and run through the wringer, just to see a government researcher’s head explode.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2007/11/07/gupta.obesity.study.cnn

Anyway. I have recently been reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, which looks over a series of previous studies on obesity and health and suggests very strongly that (a) it’s not as simple as “calories in, calories out”; (b) there’s not a huge correlation between fat intake and obesity; (c) the most dangerous things for you seem to be starches and sweets. One of the chapters explains how the federal government, when making up diet regulations in the 1970s, was rather strongly dependent on one particular scientist who was bucking some previous research trends. I worry that if the government were the central provider of health care there would be graver cases of misdirection.

I’m with Francesca that the corporation should not be in charge of paying for its employees’ health care. Single-pay it or find another solution, but don’t make me have to judge a job on the quality of the health insurance that might come with it at least until HR finds some known-only-to-them reason to switch.

It’s true that this statistic may be slightly skewed by data collection processes between different countries, but the US’s major health care indicators are still below many other countries that have socialized medicine. We SHOULD be #1 on those, considering that we are the #1 spender per capita on health care, by a *large* margin. I’m not saying that socialized medicine doesn’t have its flaws, but “oh no, we might have to wait in line!” is not really a flaw of the system, it’s a flaw of a country that expects instant gratification in all things. What does our health care dollar go towards, if not our health? What are we getting for the $2 trillion we spend on health care each year?

I’d also like to add that providing a mother with full prenatal care costs less than a single day of ICU care for an extremely low birthweight baby. Every $1 spent on prenatal care saves $3 in the long-term health of the child. This is an excellent book on the current state of our healthcare system:

http://www.amazon.com/Health-Care-USA-Understanding-Organization/dp/0763736252/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-3174081-3524749?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194381006&sr=8-1

I think I’ll listen to my real doctor about what’s healthy and what’s not, thanks. When she tells me that my BMI of 22 is putting me at risk for cancer I’ll listen, but somehow I doubt she will.

Here are the recommendations; there’s also a link to the full report on that site. The specific rec is “Be as lean as possible without becoming underweight.”

http://www.aicr.org/site/PageServer?pagename=dc_home_guides

Ah, yes, but that is because (according to my neo-natal NP sister), many countries do not count as live births children who die soon after birth (like up to a year), because many people come to the US specifically because they have high-risk pregnancies (remember the lady with sextuplets — quints? — who came to the US from Canada a couple of months ago?), because we will try to treat sick babies that many countries would let die and because we create more high-risk pregnancies with assisted fertilization procedures.