In my opinion, our culture has some serious problems with black and white thinking, linear thinking and judging books by their covers – hence the title of this post. Case in point, we had a troll comment to Sas’s post about being denied insurance heart coverage because the insurance company doesn’t like her weight that went something like this and I’m paraphrasing:
Why would an insurance company that wants to make money deny someone coverage for any other reason than the person has/will have crappy health… cuz, ya know… insurance companies make money off of premiums and they don’t make money not selling policies…
I’ve tried to challenge this troll before… and challenging that person is not the point of this post or of any interest of me. What I do know from painful experience is that people with eating disorders ALSO have trouble thinking in shades of gray and I personally found it really helpful to see black/white thinking challenged. Seeing this helped me to find the gray spaces… and so, given this linear comment, I am going to give an example of how things often aren’t the way they seem on the exterior, books cannot be judged by their covers and for those who want to make comments like this – I suggest you do your own research, because I’m not always in the mood to answer such questions as I know size-acceptance veterans (who are most of my readers as far as I know) don’t need the lesson. 😉 Though… just in case some of my acceptance readers ever wondered about this, I will also dig into this….
As a financial professional, I know a thing or two about insurance companies. Did you know that insurance companies were financial institutions technically? I did. 😀
It is patently false that insurance companies make all their profits off of selling policies, however, I understand on the surface how it may look this way. If insurance companies only made profits off of premiums, in years when there were many claims they would be totally screwed profit-wise and Wall Street ain’t that forgiving to allow big companies to have losses like that, even if it is cuz of a “bad year.” Therefore, insurance companies take a certain portion of the premiums insurance buyers pay (they are required to keep a certain amount of money on reserve to pay off claims that may roll in on the short-term) above the legal reserve limit and invest that money in securities… ya know… stocks and bonds and commercial paper, etc. In fact, in some years, insurance companies have made a LOSS on their actual insurance business yet still make profits due to their investments.
Now, insurance companies invest most of their money as low-risk as possible… this means US Treasury Bonds and the like. However, they are also able to invest in “investment” grade corporate securities…. say, stocks that have a good rating or coporate bonds that have a good credit rating. What is an insurance company was invested significantly in a big pharma company that made millions or billions on weight loss surgery or diet drugs? Given that in some years insurance companies only make a profit via their investments it is possible that insurance companies could have an incentive to help perpetuate fat-predjudice to get those fatties on Alli or lap band, so that their securities investments can bring in a sweet return. I spent most of the morning trying to dig into the investment portfolios of health insurance companies and so far haven’t been able to dig into which corporations that they are investing in. But, I don’t see my hypothesis as being unrealistic. Insurance companies are famous for hedging their bets – literally. If they may lose money in one area, they will invest in an area that is expected to make money during that same period that they may lose money in another area. So, they could easily hedge not making money by not selling insurance to fat people by investing in companies that sell weight loss “solutions” to make up the difference. The weight-loss industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. How could huge multi-billion dollar financial institutions such as insurance companies not have a piece of that pie?
Beyond the financial possibilities, insurance companies (like all other companies as yet) are run by human beings – perhaps even human beings who don’t know any better about all the fat panic malarky that is being spread in the world. Maybe some people in top management are self-hating fat people… or fat hating thin people… or both! Maybe some people just like to be mean and like to poke at a vulnerable population that gets poked at a lot (like… ah hem… fat people). Maybe some people in these companies are eating disordered and can’t see fat objectively. Who knows!
What we do know for a fact is that insurance companies base their health table guidelines on charts that were prolly irrellevant in the 1940’s when the silly things were created – an excerpt from the acceptance classic “Fat!So?”:
How reliable are the tables that decide your healthcare fate? Most insurance charts are based on the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC) Height and Weight tables, first published in 1942. The charts claim to list the weights at which people live the longest. Updated in 1959 and in 1983, the MLIC tables are based on data from more than four million life insurance policies.
Critics of the tables point out that since most policyholders are white men who can afford insurance, there is no way to tell whether the suggested weights result in long life for women, people of color, or poor people.
…
The problem is that 60 percent of Americans weigh more than the height/weight tables allow. With so many people “in the extreme,” it would be unfortunate if the tables were wrong.
Okay… yeah, people are fatter than ever. We also know that people are healthier than ever. Gee… if people are FATTER than ever and also HEALTHIER than ever, do you think there may be some CORRELATION? Hehehehehehe… maybe even some CAUSATION?
From Saint Sandy (cuz she is some kind of angel) over at JunkFoodScience regarding data that was published last June:
The biggest health story of the year has received almost no notice. We are healthier and living longer than in the entire history of our country. Why is such great news not being shouted from the rooftops?
The media incessantly tells us we that our diets, weights and modern lifestyles are so deplorably unhealthy that massive new public health programs are urgently needed and that a complete transformation of our society to coerce us all into healthy lifestyles is imperative. But every year the evidence provides no support for such doomsday claims or the need for such vast, government interventions.
…
Age-related deaths from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, liver disease and hypertension — all of the causes some want us to believe are due to unhealthy lifestyles, rather than mostly aging — have continued to drop significantly.
The truth is that some people are going to refuse to see facts that are right in front of their noses, because they are so invested in fat being a moral issue. I don’t care to engage those folks as it is a waste of everyone’s energy.
What I do hope to achieve here is to illustrate that things in this world (especially in regards to fat panic and the obesity “epidemic”) aren’t as simple as they may seem on the surface. Large organizations can be ignorant, sneaky, predjudiced and all sorts of other things. Such is life…. I also like to make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak… cuz frankly, I love raw lemons. 😛 I like to see what can be learned from trolls, if there IS something to be learned from a particular situation. Sometimes there is… sometimes there isn’t. That troll comment made me wonder if people who are into size-acceptance ever wondered the same thing and I realized I have something to share on the topic. Who knew… trolls can be helpful – sometimes anyway. LOL
–AngryGrayRainbows
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Brilliant post!
Good ideas! Everything floats around! We just need to be mindful of all aspects!
Keep positive!
Ceylan
Thanks Ceylan! I do try… and even if I can’t keep positive, I at least try to gravitate back to positivity. 😉
I like your use of the word “mindful”… mindfulness is really important and it is something that seems to get lost in the hustle and bustle of north american culture far too often. I wish mindfulness was taught in schools! But… I am grateful that for those of us who persue mindfulness that there are venues to learn it in the world, even if it’s not a part of grade school or high school curriculum.
Another thing about insurance companies. They aren’t in business to ensure that everyone has health coverage and gets the medical treatment they need, they’re in business to make money. In order to make more money, it’s in their best interest to deny treatment as often as possible for the most specious of reasons (see Sicko if you don’t believe that).
A good point, indeed, Vesta!
Since I read your comment (the day you wrote it, actually), I’ve been thinking about alternatives to for-profit health insurance. It’s a sticky topic and I cannot say that I have thought much about it.
I’ve found some insurance companies to be sickeningly ruthless. I was once denied payment for a YEARLY PHYSICAL, because they said it was a “pre-existing condition.” I’ve also read many things about how insurance companies often try to take advantage most of vulnerable people… people who don’t know the system or don’t feel like they have any clout to fight denied claims. How can these people who create and carry out these policies look themselves in the mirror??? It boggles my mind.