They certainly are...

I just saw something on TV that may make Bob Dylan unhappy. Kaiser-Permenente, an insurance company, just used the song “The Times They Are A Changing” in a commercial to stir fat people to action. They showed a man, overweight, changing his thinking about being fat, apparently because he was listening to Bob.

(A skinny) Bob Dylan, 1962.


Now you can call me a cynic, but I think it is an insult to reduce such an important song to a commercial for an insurance company claiming to care about their customers (this is where Dylan might disagree. He claimed his songs meant lots of things, some obvious, some not so much, and occasionally he meant what he said - but the reality of that song is strong...I digress.). We must not fall into the delusion that the insurance company actually wants people to be healthy. That is anti-profit. If people were generally healthy and exercised effort in taking care of themselves, health insurance rates would go down. Dramatically. It is naïve to think insurance companies want this to happen.

It is these commercials that make me want to train the fat [m]asses, moving them off their couches and into gyms, or onto running trails, because fewer instances of heart attack, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other environmentally induced conditions would actually lower our health insurance. Few would disagree that less-crowded hospitals, increased life expectancies, and lower health-care costs are good things.

I pay for my own insurance. For health coverage, I pay $100 each month. I have a $2000 deductible. I don’t smoke, I’ve never had anything worse than the flu, and that’s only happened once or twice. I had surgery once at the age of 10 months. I’m not the healthiest person I know, but I’m far closer to the top of the healthy heap than most. I am being fleeced. Insurance companies know that with the ever-rising cost of even the most standard medical treatments, it is simply insane to go without insurance. They can charge whatever they like. You and I will pay.

I was recently confronted with the possibility of surgery for a potential hernia I earned working for the US Forest Service. After a couple doctor visits and one ultrasound, the doctors concluded that I didn’t need surgery. That came as a relief, because the government wouldn’t have paid anyway. They have some loophole regarding non-specific injuries on the job that gets them out of what must be thousands and thousands of dollars worth of medical bills. Therefore, the burden falls upon me.

Individuals are powerless when caught in the void between mega-insurance companies and mega-employers. Both have the financial power to screw the individual, who has not the resources, intellectual, financial, or temporal to compete on such a grand scale. Lawyers for these companies operate behind closed doors, 24 hours a day, in teams with unlimited income, because finding the newest ways to stay ahead of someone who’s getting close to being treated fairly is always worth the cost.

Treat your body with some respect. Join a gym. Walk your dog for longer than 5 minutes. Try and get from the “obese” category of our society into the “overweight” one. Set some kind of self-respecting goal. Don’t believe what you see on TV, and don’t resign yourself to a preconceived fate. I pay way too much for insurance, and it’s your fault.