It is obvious that in our medical system that is in the western world, obese people cost more to treat. In turn they cost the rest of society more money. Obese patients require more special treatment, for example the increased costs of treating infertility among obese women.

Those 5 – 6 per cent of NZ’rs who are obese cost more to the system its as simple as that. Those 5-6 per cent group are going to get larger as time progresses. In a market driven health system which is what we have that is a concern. You cannot just ignore that. You may want to believe obesity is not a big problem, fine. But don’t lie to yourself about the costs.

Look ACC is under extraordinary pressure from its investments not returning a profit, but all Nick Smith seems to be concerned with is that entitlements and costs have increased, but not why. Thats what the important question is. WHY. It is not some socialist agenda, it is reaping the whirlwind of 15 years of bad public health policy regarding obesity and diabetes.

This is one study across many years (1994-2007) at a large institution of 12000 workers. I believe the trends can be applied to NZ, it is not unfeasible.

http://cfm.mc.duke.edu/wysiwyg/downloads/ObesityandWorkersComp.pdf

What’s hilarious is that while decrying the “sensationalist” coverage of ACC’s finances, the anonymous guest poster has bought in hook, line and sinker to equally, if not more, sensationalist OBESITY EPIDEMIC OH NOES!!!!!!! media coverage.

Don’t want to sound harsh, but please, Guest Poster, it’s all so much bullshit, and I invite you to read
http://kateharding.net/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/
before starting on the fat-hate.

‘what about sexually abused kids covered by ACC?’ There won’t be any under National. Pushed back home behind closed doors like it used to be. Didn’t happen. Like rape.

If it didn’t happen National won’t have to pay anything towards healing. It’s all right, anyway. The bible says so…

Everything they have done has ignored one important factor – the personal touch, the personal plan, the personal psychology of buying into healthy change. All that so called touchy feely stuff that actually works.

Shame we couldn’t harness that star quality of winner Valerie Vili. Watching her with her coach I could see she had everything going for her – the determination, the talent, the total focus of winning but with that star quality – sharing her success.

National/Act simple-minded peas in a pod that they are, don’t get that. Vili knew that her Coach was just as important to that win as what she herself gave to it.

Shame we are reversing back to the 90s and the negative, nasty, vindictive, divisive selfish punishing psychology of NAct.

However, I agree with the Connolly approach to preventing obesity.

In subsequent years, rates of death decreased markedly from 1997 to 2002: by 51% for diabetes, 35% for CAD, 20% for stroke and 18% for all-cause mortality.

The question is whether there’s a less extreme way to get people off their backsides and eating less/more healthily than having a food and fuel shortage – I certainly hope so.

However, I believe National’s decision to reintroduce crap food into schools was made with not even one tenth of the thought and consideration that has gone into this post and attendant comments. It was a nasty emotional reaction to what they have coined “social engineering’ – as if trying to improve the diet of children is a bad thing.

BLiP, I have no knowledge what process the Ministry of Education followed when the last government decided to roll out this policy. I would have thought, however, that before rolling it out nationwide you would set up a few pilot schools for a period of time, measure their performance in reducing obesity against schools without obesity reduction programmes, and be able to clearly demonstrate positive results before applying it nationwide. Alternatively, you should be able to draw on international research showing that such policies actually work.

You seem to think it should work, and I think everyone would hope that it might work, but I think social policy changes should provide evidence evidence that it will probably work. I haven’t seen the research that says such moves work. I have seen evidence that they don’t work.

I don’t have any expertise in social policy or education, other than as a parent. My instinct is that school-based social policy engineering doesn’t work, because the habits you try to teach children at school can’t break from the habits they learn at home. I haven’t heard Labour MPs provide evidence that removing unhealthy food from tuck shops reduces obesity in children. If they’ve got the evidence, great. Let’s do it. But if they haven’t, then it seems like a fairly unnecessary move just to justify the employment of a few social policy boffins in Wellington.

Does anyone know if there is any research on Physio’s fraudulently billing for client visits even though they have been rehabilitated?

Has there been an anonymous questionnaire to people asking if they were taking the time off work prescribed to them, even though they could return earlier? (This one occurs to me as last year I had an operation and was given 3 weeks off work. I was back after 4 working days as I was recovered and bored. Had to complete an extra form to say I would be back earlier. I’m wondering if there is an increase of people who are taking the doctors recommended time off to the letter?)