Thanks to the do-anything-if-it-makes-you-feel-good Nineties, our culture is now in an era wherein we have an unprecedented lack of personal responsibility for our own actions.  No longer is it a person’s fault if they smoke cigarettes, it’s the tobacco companies’ fault for selling it.  No longer is it a person’s fault if they drink profusely and do bad things, it’s their genes or upbringing that causes the propensity to drink alcohol and beat their spouses or children.  No longer is it a person’s fault if they murder someone, it’s their faulty psychological rationale that causes them to.  In recent months people have even started to claim that it isn’t their fault they’re overweight, it’s the fault of the fast food companies for making their food taste good.

Personal responsibility has slowly slid away from our society and last month the Bush administration delved into this true quagmire.  Health and Human Service Secretary Tommy Thompson announced a subtle change in Medicare’s coverage of obesity treatments.  According to the MSNBC article, “Medicare said it would throw away language in its Coverage Issues Manual… stating, ‘Obesity itself cannot be considered an illness.’  The move was widely hailed as a crucial cracking open of the door that would eventually allow Medicare to pay for some obesity treatments.”  While small at the moment, such an opening will inevitably be widened and lead to more people in the government handout lines of the future.

Once again our government caved to the demands of special interest groups and ignored the critical, common sense aspects of personal responsibility.  If a person is incapable of eating healthier, of exercising, or just simply not eating, why should they be rewarded for their incompetence with government money?  Contrary to the belief of far too many in this country, it is not the government’s responsibility to take care of those who refuse to take care of themselves.  The government’s job is to protect people from actual, bona fide threats, not their own foolish actions.

Sadly, Thompson has opened the door to the inevitable flood of requests for money by people who do not deserve it because they should have known better in the first place.  Recently, surgeons attempted to help a 40-year-old Floridian whose skin became grafted to the fabric of the couch she had lived on for more than four years.  The 480-pound behemoth died as a result, and she put at risk the emergency rescuers who had to use biohazard suits and pump fresh air into her apartment in order to survive the overpowering filth.  Eventually, Medicare would pay this woman – that is, reward her – for her failure to eat healthy, maintain a reasonable weight, or even move on occasion.  Why should the government reward this kind of behavior with money?
 
Part of this problem stems from the fundamentally flawed manner used to determine whether a person is overweight or obese.  Common sense would dictate that something is amiss if two thirds of Americans are considered overweight.  Perhaps the definition of overweight needs to be adjusted away from the anorexic fashion models found throughout the advertising world who have more weight in their breast implants than in their brains.

Take the leading measurement of weight, the Body Mass Index.  According to the charts, a five-foot tall person’s healthy weight range is just 97 to 123 pounds.  Beyond 128 pounds they are considered overweight and at 153 they’re obese.  A five-foot, six-inch person’s healthy range is 118 to 148 pounds, they’re overweight over 155 pounds, and they’re obese at 186.  A six-foot person’s healthy range is 140 to 177 pounds, they’re considered overweight at 184 pounds, and they’re obese at 221.  It makes no difference whether you are male or female for these measurements.  These numbers lack sense.  According to the BMI, I’m nearly obese, yet I run three miles every other day, eat a fairly healthy diet, and coach football for ten year olds.  Do these sound like activities normally associated with an obese individual?  Of course not, hence the flaw.  Critics of this position will note that other measurements are used to determine whether or not a person is truly overweight, but such a case-by-case study is not used in nationwide surveys that conclude two-thirds of Americans are overweight and a third are obese.

The problem is exacerbated by the inherent failure of common sense in our government’s handouts.  Medicare recently completed a three-year study to determine the validity of calling obesity a disease and never managed to arrive at the answer that every American with a capacity for rational thought knows: obesity isn’t a disease.

The real disease that our culture has is a failure to take responsibility for our actions.  Some of the blame for this falls on the advertising world’s perfectly sculpted and idealized human form.  Primarily, it is the fault of each person for lacking the self-esteem or self-respect to recognize when they are overweight and doing anything about it.  And in the end, that isn’t a crime.  Part of being American means people are entitled to freely act in whatever manner they desire, they just shouldn’t go whining to the government with their hands out when their carefree, lazy lifestyle choices finally catch up with them.

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