A couple of interesting health care-related items caught my eye today.
First, I went by my internist’s office for my annual physical and noticed that another group of doctors had leased a much larger office across the hall from my doctor’s office.
I peaked inside the new doctors’ office window and noticed that the reception area was nicely furnished with plush leather sofas and chairs, flat screen TV’s, handsome hardwood flooring and tasteful Persian rugs.
The opulence of the office prompted me to find out what kind of doctors were apparently doing so well, so I grabbed one of the doctor’s cards from the reception area. It read (not the real name):
"John Smith, M.D., Laparoscopic Obesity Surgery"
Meanwhile, this NY Times article reveals the utterly unsurprising fact that New York City regulations requiring fast food restaurants to post the caloric content of their food did not induce obese consumers from eating less:
A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains suggests that when it comes to deciding what to order, people’s stomachs are more powerful than their brains.
The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.
It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.
But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
The findings, to be published Tuesday in the online version of the journal Health Affairs come amid the spreading popularity of calorie-counting proposals as a way to improve public health across the country.
“I think it does show us that labels are not enough,” Brian Elbel, an assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study, said in an interview.
"Labels are not enough?" Makes one wonder what regulation Professor Elbel will suggest next — maybe governmental rationing of fast food?
The argument in favor of these types of absurd governmental intrusions into our lives is that government subsidizes medical insurance, so government should attempt through regulation to decrease obesity, which unfairly heaps a portion of health-care costs relating to obesity on tax-paying citizens who are not obese.
But putting aside for a moment the debatable notion of whether obesity really increases health-care costs all that much, the far more effective regulation to decrease obesity would be to provide a financial incentive for citizens to lose weight. Namely, reduce the governmental subsidy of medical insurance for those who choose to remain obese.
Fat chance of that happening.
