Vote totals:
Yes:
0%
No:
100%
Neutral:
0%
DEBATE: SHOULD FAT PEOPLE BE OFFERED INCENTIVES TO LOSE WEIGHT?
SHOULD FAT PEOPLE BE OFFERED INCENTIVES TO LOSE WEIGHT?
Incentives work
Many people want to lose weight but need that little extra push to help them on their way. We already subsidise the stopping of smoking through the use of cessation medicines on prescription and obesity is just a big a problem for society. Therefore, it makes sense to offer overweight people a small incentive to change their behaviour.
The greatest incentive should be that people want to be healthy, take care of themselves and look good. If these essential factors aren’t in place no amount of money will keep people slim forever.
SHOULD FAT PEOPLE BE OFFERED INCENTIVES TO LOSE WEIGHT?
The scheme will save much more than it costs
Any money spent on reducing obesity will be more than recouped in savings for the health service. The amount of resources which will be consumed by obesity is project to be huge and on the basis that prevention is better than the cure we should spend now to save later.
This is not society’s problem; it is a problem for the individual. Any extra costs incurred through their behaviour should be met by them. A certain amount of healthcare should be available for free, but if people refuse to continue to look after themselves the state should not do it for them.
SHOULD FAT PEOPLE BE OFFERED INCENTIVES TO LOSE WEIGHT?
Government should influence behaviour
The government has a responsibility to help shape society. Drugs are banned, we don’t allow people to drink and drive and smoking has been banned from public places. These laws have been enacted to help us make the right decisions – if we let people act according to the way they felt none of these laws would be in place. Obesity is a related issue, we need to help people help themselves and by so doing will create a better society for all.
Obesity is more akin to addiction than chosen behaviour. In that case, the government is singularly ineffective about creating change. Most fat people don’t want to be so, they’ve tried and failed to lose weight before. All these incentives do is make people feel worse, to make them feel even more ineffectual. And when that happens they’ll eat more.
SHOULD FAT PEOPLE BE OFFERED INCENTIVES TO LOSE WEIGHT?
Money should be spent elsewhere
Reduced gym memberships are already available via tax credits and various other schemes are either planed or in place to make it easy for people to lose weight. This only has a limited effect and in order to encourage more people to lose weight we need to adopt a more vigorous approach, of which offering them money might be one weapon in the armoury.
Most overweight people are so because of an underlying issue and these issues are best dealt with by experts. Therefore, rather than give money to the obese we should reduce the cost of gym memberships and provide specialist health centres staffed by weight loss experts and nutritionists.
SHOULD FAT PEOPLE BE OFFERED INCENTIVES TO LOSE WEIGHT?
This would encourage harmful dieting
Safeguards could be put in place to ensure people don’t engage in harmful dieting. For instance, we could restrict the amount of weight lost in a given period, or only pay if the weight had been kept off for a certain period of time. In fact, financial incentives could be used to encourage just the sort of dieting that really works.
The temptation would be to diet quickly in order to get the money. People would not change the patterns of behaviour that made them fat in the first place. We need to encourage a lifestyle change and offering people cash is not the right way to go about it.
SHOULD FAT PEOPLE BE OFFERED INCENTIVES TO LOSE WEIGHT?
Junk food should be taxed
Junk food might be a major contributory factor to obesity but by taxing it all we make everybody pay – including the slim. Why should people who are otherwise healthy and who like a hamburger from time to time be penalised because others can’t lose weight. Moreover, since poor people eat more junk food than any other group on society a tax on junk food is a tax on them. Hardly fair.
Junk food is the single largest contributory factor to the obesity epidemic. Therefore, it should pay for the mess it has created. If people want to eat McDonalds, fine. But they should also make a contribution to the health service – and to their own future health – by paying a premium for so doing. This is a far more equitable way of raising the money necessary to treat this epidemic.
