Slim Down or Pay a Fine

Privacy advocates will be seething if this strategy is implemented. The idea is to pressure people to maintain a healthy weight by penalizing them:

“With health-care costs rising, some large employers are taking radical new steps to cut corners: They’re charging overweight employees a fee if they don’t slim down.”

link: Overweight? Prepare to Pay Up

The employers then sets standards for what is acceptable weight. This reaches into the private lives of employees, in terms of their life style and their personal health. If employers are allowed to set monetary penalties based on weight, will the government be far behind in setting a ‘fat tax’? There is the possibility of accessing billions of dollars annually. It is a ‘no fail’ plan. Generally, as people age, they tend to put on some weight. Their earning potential also increases, so the government coffers will increase accordingly.

Perhaps the solution is to develop DNA science far enough so that, as an infant, government agencies can determine such factor as possible weight problems, possible health risks, possible life expectancy and so forth. With this information in hand, companies and governments can slot the person into the correct education stream, the proper future job and, of course, the appropriate tax formula.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster:  http://flyinghamster.com/

[tags]weight, penalty, health, privacy, fat tax, dna science, standards [/tags]