Your link does not support this. It merely cites ONE study that indicates that sodium is PERHAPS not the main cause. Your statement is misleading. Perhaps because you are more dedicated to making your point than the truth.

Fat smokers who eat too much salt look forward to kidney failure. And no one is going to enjoy paying for their dialysis. Dialysis is currently financed largely by government funds.

Yes, but that conflicts with their religious faith in business and their knee-jerk demonization of government.

“The most amazing aspect of this whole thing, for me, has always been the imperviouusness of policy makers, and even more so people who consider themselves serious academics and scientists, to the overwhelming evidence that there’s no way to do this.”

Oh, yes we can. Make insurance rates higher (this also happens in the free market, as Michael pointed out, although not in larger pools), deny coverage (same), or more ominously, tax employers out of business who don’t have government-mandated exercise and nutrition programs (Obama-type public madness here).

Campos absolutely is right about BMI and mean mortality rates. There is a strong correlation between diabetes and morbid obesity, and some evidence of a link between obesity and heart disease. What doesn’t get mentioned as often, of course, is the total lack of correlation between cancer and weight. I’m certain the red meat police will be put on that one, although recent studies tend to show no correlation there, either.

Campos nails this hysteria when he imputes it to the left-wing’s incessant need to demonize groups to advance hair-brained schemes. The attempt to hang health care costs around the necks of the elderly prompted such outcry that new demons were needed after the old folks came after Democratic party hacks. Maybe you fat folks need an equivalent of AARP and need to bitch more and need to bloc vote all the time. Then new demons can be created.

I agree w/ Michael that the private insurers don’t take kindly to obesity out of an ideological knee-jerk reaction to not being slim. There are obvious and true health concerns with being seriously obese or “fat”.

I agree BMI is essentially useless but refuse to concede being fat is “healthy” as Campos has claimed repeatedly in his book and in the interview.

There are good reasons for why most obese individuals are the way they are. It mostly boils down less to what they eat but how much of it they eat (they gorge). Why eat half the bag of chips quickly when you can eat a quarter of it gradually?

As a PRT coordinator on my last ship I had to escort overweight sailors around during meal hours in order to keep them from gorging themselves as they were wanton to do. I didn’t do this for their health so much as so they could keep their weight down to an acceptable level of progress for the Navy’s slightly overzealous weight standards. To a man these people had seriously flawed eating habits, eating way too much way too fast, then going back for more or eating a snack because they were still hungry. No wonder they were 15-25 pounds out of standards!

It doesn’t help that some of the popular foods we have had in the past few decades were chock full of chemicals and additives that have been shown to be less than helpful to a healthy lifestyle. It also boils down to people living very sedentary lifestyles. We’re not asking for everyone to join a health club but if more Americans would simply walk around their neighborhood, in a park or do other forms of easy, enjoyable exercise, they would be healthier and less obese.

Thin and fat are both not healthy. Spreading myths like Campos and the anti-fat police do are not helpful.

Hey gang lets be sporting here ,the SCHIP funding hit smokers for 63 cents a pack and their are likely more people who are fat than smokers with some overlap of course.

Why should smokers have all the fun.

The only reason - literally the only way — I could get insurance is to use a CA work-around that required me to form a corporation. The sainted free market said no.

So sorry, this is not support for private over public.