won't hire the obese

It's a good thing there's nothing big about Texans, or Texas in general.

 

Is there something wrong with this requirement?

 

I wonder if they don't hire smokers. Last time my wife was in the hospital, some of her nurses reaked of cigerette smoke. Didn't really reflect a commitment to health on the part of the practitioner.

 

BMI isn't the best indicator of health, because a fit athlete can easily have a high BMI because muscle is denser than fat. High BMI is usually a good indicator, but it's just that, an indicator.

Also, considering this hospital is under investigation for racial bias, I'm not 100% certain it's acting in good faith.

 

except their level of myopic ignorance.

 

Likely not that high, though. It is true that many NFL players, for example, have an "obese" BMI of over 30, but the only ones who are going to be in the "very obese" range of 35 and over are the biggest guards and defensive tackle types who considering all the health problems they have at that weight both during their careers and after they retire probably rightfully should be considered to be both athletes and obese at the same time. The Gilbert Browns and Aaron Gibsons of football- those guys are really fat.

The article mentions that more hospitals have policies against hiring smokers.

 

You're right -I was thinking of the 30-31 range, where a lot of the shorter, but stocky, running backs end up (though Jerome Bettis had a 35+ BMI during his playing career, I think).

And yeah, professional athletes tend to have higher risk of heart attack, so yeah, the 35 BMI cutoff kinda makes sense.

 

why not just use body fat percentage? they don't make calipers big enough for some people?

 

Okay, I was wrong. I ran some NFL players to see, and a few with the right combination of characteristics would run afoul of the policy. London Fletcher, for example, is considered a "short" linebacker, so the combination of his height and his muscular frame gives him a BMI that says he's very obese.

Maybe like controversy over the criminal history policies, the policy is more of a proxy to address racial prejudices of the old patients in the hospital.

 

That will really cut down on the available employee pool:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-05-07/obesity-projections-adults/54791430/1

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/303/3/235.full?ijkey=ijKHq6YbJn3Oo&keytype=ref&siteid=amajnls

 

From one of the articles:



Who in God's name needs TWO Cokes for a lunch? This country could halve its obesity epidemic if we banned soft drinks. Just outright banned them. Each 16-ounce Coke has 187 calories in it. So replace those two with some juice or, heaven forbid, WATER, and they've already cut nearly 400 calories a day. Walk the ******** to work and you'll be fine!

I understand that there are people with genetic problems related to eating. I also know that it cannot possibly be 1/3 of our population. People who guess their weight routinely miss the mark. They routinely get it wrong. They eat too much, walk too little. Even something as simple as turning your workspace into a standing-room space instead of sitting will eat up 30-40 calories an hour over sitting. So if you work 8 hours a day, and don't drink those two goddamn Cokes, you can burn 700 calories compared to your current routine.

There's just so much out there for people to not gain so much weight that I support this hospital's plan. It should be nationwide. You shouldn't be employed until you are a certain fat percentage (yes, again except for people with genetic problems). You shouldn't get health care, you shouldn't get a driver's license, so on. But that's my dystopian rant. The biggest thing we can do to ensure that obesity is curbed is to nationalize and then destroy the fast-food chains and the soft drink industry. Once that's gone, we go after frozen foods. Then we get people walking again and we're set.

 

I agree with the posters who say it is hypocritical for smokers to work in the health care field. It does not engender confidence that the health care workers really believe what is preached by the medical profession.

So assuming that the hospital wants to end this hypocrisy, and to promote a non-smoking, non-obese lifestyle, how do they do it? You have to grandfather in everyone currently employed, and set a clear policy for future employment. To avoid any possible racial or gender bias, they have to use some objective criterion like BMI.

I think you can make a case that health care is an industry in which presenting an image of a healthy lifestyle is important to attract business (patients) and is critical that the customers (patients) follow the recommendations of this lifestyle to achieve satisfaction in the services rendered. Unlike, say, a machine shop.

And I lived in the South long enough to know that there are plenty of fat white folks out there. There is no way this can be construed as racist.

 

The link JBigJake posted said non-hispanic Blacks have the highest rates of obesity and it is substantially higher than whites (44.1% to 32.6%) and I found stats for Texas from around 2005 that had an even bigger disparity between blacks and whites for that state. So, whether it was intended to have a disparate impact on blacks compared to whites, in practice the result could be to shift the makeup of the hospital's workforce towards white employees.

 

Of course people who aren't fat can't be unhealthy, and all heavy people are unhealthy. So it makes perfect sense to hire (or not hire) based on weight, rather than how capable someone is at his or her job. Perfect sense. Not discrimination at all.

Oh, and Brummie, you're so brave to speak out about this. Nobody gives fat people a hard time in our society! If only there were some pressure on them to be thin, some kind of motivation! And you're right, there's no possible way that second bottle of Coke might belong to someone else.

 

1. Check closely, yes there are some vitamins, etc. but juice really isn't so good for you either. Still has tons of sugar (which are converted to fat) and you receive no fiber as if you were to eat the fruit or vegetable.

2. I really enjoy my one or two Cokes a week.

3. I assume you are talking about frozen prepared foods. There are plenty of good frozen foods.

 

My dystopian rant aside, I know a lot of the social psychology that Big Food and Big Beverage use to entice people to eat beyond their needs. Our bodies are very bad at ignoring things like the smell they purposefully waft out of a McDonald's. From a very early age we are brainwashed to believe that Coca-Cola is good, that Gatorade is a "sports drink," and that sugary cereals are better than Corn Flakes or Cheerios. Our society has also developed to the point where you have to walk against the current to do things that are good for you, i.e. walk to errands, or walk to school, or to work. Or bicycle. As a cyclist, I can tell you I haven't taken it outside in two years (I have a station set up at home to work out on) because drivers in Kentucky don't care about bicycles. The roads don't have sidewalks, there aren't bike paths, etc. Our society has made it very difficult for obese people to lose the weight, and the "goal" is some unattainable body shape, like the superheroes in the Avengers or Scarlett Johannson from the Avengers (damn, she's hot, but a superhero? No.).

That said, my sixth-grade level of education has taught me that societies are made up of people, and if obese people were really serious about losing weight, they now have the largest sneaky: ) voting bloc in the nation and can start using it to push for legislative action on priorities that matter most to them. Why obese people are, by and large, content with the way society is currently run baffles me, and it's why I don't lose sleep over this type of discrimination.

 

I'm one of those weirdos who really only drinks hand-squeezed (and I mean I squeeze it myself) juice. My plan is to use the juicer to get most of the juice, and then run the innards through a blender to get the rest of it.

 

makes no difference Brummie. Denver has plenty of sidewalks and bike paths, and cyclists still insist on going up and down the curviest, narrowest mountain roads. for the most part they're pretty good at staying out of the way of cars, but every now and then I run into an idiot (not literally, fortunately) who thinks he has a legit right to the center of the barely one-lane road. there's just something about runners' and cyclists' desire for pain that I don't get.

 

TBF, depending on the nature of the job, I don't see very much wrong with requiring your employees to be fit enough to do their jobs... A BMI of 35 isn't being a couple of pounds overweight, that's the kind of surplus mass that will affect your everyday life significantly. Though making it a rigid rule seems a bit excessive.

 

People are thinner in Denver, though!

 

According to the hospital, the policy has nothing to do with actual job performance, but instead is intended to project a certain "image" for the patients, particularly elderly patients.