What You Eat Is Your Business article PDF

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Article summaries and arguement about the troubles of obesity for an argumentative paper...

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Edgar Fuentes-Ayala 1/27/2022 1020 Dr. Mackin

What You Eat Is Your Business By Radley Balko Rhetorical Analysis 1. Balko believes we should all have a personal responsibility to take care of our health and that the “best way to alleviate the obesity “public health” crisis is to remove obesity from the realm of public health.” His thesis is “We’ll all make better choices about diet, exercise, and personal health when someone else isn’t paying for the consequences of those choices.” 2. For some reason, Balko never brings out statistics, facts, or testimonials by authorities to further prove his claim. He provides examples and fictional situations on what we could do to make sure everyone is healthy by explaining to get the government out of the fight for lowering obesity and instead make public health insurance make us pay more or less depending on if we are overweight or not, More and more, states are preventing private health insurers from charging overweight and obese clients higher premiums, which effectively removes any financial incentive for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.” While he does bring up good points, it is worthless without any credible evidence to help prove his big overall claim. 3. I believe Balko’s purpose to write this article was to inform us why obesity should not be part of the public health sector anymore and persuade us to go that route since another person’s controllable health could negatively affect us and others. “It’s difficult to think of anything more private and of less public concern than what we choose to put into our bodies. It only becomes a public matter when we force the public to pay for the consequences of those choices.” Balko also says “Your heart attack drives up the cost of my premiums and office visits. And if the government is paying for my anti-cholesterol medication, what incentive is there for me to put down the cheeseburger?” to further explain and persuade us why Obesity should be excluded from public health sector and personal issues since others would be paying for our medication instead of ourselves watching what we are eating so we would not need the medication anymore. 4. The author is talking to everyone since obesity is becoming a bigger issue and affecting even more people than ever before. He tries to persuade us by using our emotions since he brings up scenarios that most people would not like, “Your heart attack drives up the cost of my premiums and office visits.”

Edgar Fuentes-Ayala 1/27/2022 1020 Dr. Mackin

5. Balko does make some good alternatives to help the obesity problem by making it an individual problem by, “freeing insurance companies to reward healthy lifestyles, and penalize poor ones.” The entire article does concern me because it never mentions 2 important topics for obesity as well. Balko never mentions mental illness that could affect one’s eating habits or those who are poor, and the healthier options are too expensive for them. Summary & Response

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Personal Responsibility for our own health instead of relying on others. Federal and state governments restricting our choices and civil liberties Remove obesity from public health to alleviate it Insurance companies reward healthy

2. Balko believes it is a private issue that Federal governments should not intervene, and health insurances could provide incentives to get healthier. “It only becomes a public matter when we force the public to pay for the consequences of those choices.” and “More and more, states are preventing private health insurers from charging overweight and obese client’s higher premiums, which effectively removes any financial incentive for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.” 3. It is still relevant because obesity is still a problem and possibly even worse than it was in 2004 from when the article was published. We still have not found an optimal solution especially ever since COVID hit which made it harder to solve. 4. Do you believe that health insurance companies should charge obese people more compared to those who live a healthy life? 5.In his article, “What You Eat Is Your Business”, Radley Balko argues that Federal state and federal government should stay out of personal issues like obesity and make it so insurance companies can charge them more compared to others to provide incentive to get healthier. While it is an acceptable idea to provide an incentive to get healthy, I disagree with his plan of low risk, high reward to get people healthier since there must be better ways to help while not possibly risking people to go under. 6. It is still a very big issue to this day and a way to not fix it is by encouraging insurance companies to charge people differently depending on how much they weigh.

Edgar Fuentes-Ayala 1/27/2022 1020 Dr. Mackin

7. While Balko’s thesis is good in writing, if it was put into effect than there would be outrage or discrimination issues because of the different costs compared to 1 person to another. He is correct in how we should be responsible for our own health and should only affect us and not others, but that would not solve everything. He does not bring up any situations for those in poorer or difficult environments or how could insurance companies could possibly exploit the situation when they are free to choose how much to charge them depending on how much they weight....