Not that this comes as any shock to America’s fitness-minded minority, but there is apparently no end to the relentless pursuit of finding someone to blame for American fatness other than ourselves.
An example of this ongoing blame-game comes from an article titled Health Insurers’ Fast Food Holdings Raise Flag , recently published in the American Journal of Public Health. Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Wesley Boyd, an author of the study, sums up the key message by “finding it ironic that these firms would invest nearly $2 billion in companies that sell food often linked to obesity and cardiovascular disease.”
“The insurance industry, so far as it seeks to make a profit, it does so in an amoral way,” says Dr. Boyd.
Let’s run this quote by Dr. Boyd through what I like to call the “Babytalk Translator,” a wonderfully useful device for extracting the, excuse the misuse here, “logic” from the free-wheeling declarations of liberal blame-throwers.
Into the translator goes “The insurance industry” and out comes “The Bad Guys.”
In goes “to make a profit” and out comes “Those greedy bastards.”
In goes “in an amoral way” and out comes “I don’t have a clue about business.”
Amoral? I assume Dr. Boyd, that we are talking about YOUR morals here, and that those morals are presumed to be representative of the morals held dear by the victimized masses you seek to protect. To the contrary, I’m guessing your fawning minions would flock at warp speed to the first insurance company that could slash its premiums by 50% on the success of its investments in far more dubious relationships than McDonald’s and Mass Mutual.
And where does Harvard put its money these days. How about this little nugget from Bloomberg back on October 17th:
Harvard University’s failed bet that interest rates would rise cost the world’s richest school at least $500 million in payments to escape derivatives that backfired.
Now Dr. Boyd, wouldn’t you say it’s a bit “amoral” for those penning your paycheck to be associating with those scurrilous derivative dealers on Wall Street?
Two words Dr. Boyd…..caveat emptor.
Business is no place for the we are the world, group-hug mentality of those who think health insurance companies divesting themselves of fast-food stock will make a dent in the sloth and laziness that combine to create America’s number two most expensive pre-existing condition. Number one is stupidity.
Physical fitness, which I believe is your well-intentioned goal, is a function of intelligence. Obesity and cardiovascular disease visit themselves most often, and most harshly, not upon those who lack an insurance provider with a vegetarian stock portfolio, but upon those who lack the discipline and personal responsibility to make the right choices at the right time over the long run.
Maybe the health insurance companies should all get together and invest their money in Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and Nutri-System; major players in the $100 billion a year weight loss industry.
They’ve been around for years and look how good that’s turning out.
