Should Obese People Pay Higher Health Insurance Premiums Than People Who Are Not Obese?

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Writing Assignment #3: Should obese people pay higher health insurance premiums than people who are not obese? - Rishard Rheyas
Obesity has become a serious problem with more than one third of adults being obese in the United States. Obesity is seen as a self-destructive behavior accompanied with smoking and use of other drugs thus, government officials and other business bureaucrats expressed the need to impose higher health insurance premiums on the obese. Obesity is not always due to the personal behavior of people and can be linked with the environment and genetics; I personally feel that obese people should not pay a higher health insurance premium compared to those that aren’t. Government officials and other business bureaucrats …show more content…

Judt claims that throughout the middle decades of the Twentieth Century society as a whole guaranteed certain rights for citizens without questioning the motivations or the morality of citizens. There has been increased support for self responsibility and reduced expectations for “handouts” from the state since the 1980s. The current proposition to raise the insurance premiums for the obese questions the morality of the government officials involved as it forces individuals to change in order to fit into a certain framework of expectation. This is unfair and it deprives individuals of their freedom and rights to choose their way of life. Concerns regarding the health issue of obesity are justifiable however this type of proposition appears to be harsh and presumptuous.
It comes down to the issue of state responsibility versus individual responsibility. The current issue at hand dealing with obesity is part of the state’s responsibility but is more about personal individual responsibility. The state should provide cheaper and healthy alternatives as one of the major reasons for obesity is daily life. David Leonhardt argues that personal responsibility has become more complicated as our environment has changed. The present environment involves us prioritizing our work more than our health or anything else hence we become more unhealthy and obese. The solution to this is

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