Thursday, November 4, 2010

Should healthy people be rewarded?


Should healthy people be rewarded?

If 61 percent of Australia is overweight or obese and increasing each year, shouldn’t the minority (the healthy population) get an added benefit for staying trim. In 2008 the total annual cost of obesity for both children and adults in Australia, including health system costs, productivity and carers costs, was estimated to be around $58 billion of tax payers hard earned money. Why should healthy people be charged for staying healthy and using less government resources? By implementing a reverse health scheme with a focus on health promotion, encouragement and reward rather than just cleaning up the mess once it’s already been made benefits the population doing the right thing.

Ideas anyone?

One proposal could be a healthy population reward scheme to reward good health. An annual health checkup would determine your health status with simple BMI and fitness tests. Once found healthy a decreased tax threshold would be rewarded.

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