Government to Track Your Child’s Body Mass Index
May 27th, 2010Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig
Via: American Thinker:
I thought this might be one of those bills where someone has misread the language and interpreted what the legislation is supposed to do incorrectly.
Nope. Rep. Kind of Wisconsin has introduced legislation that he proudly proclaims will track the body mass index (BMI) of your child from age 2-18:
A bill introduced this month in Congress would put the federal and state governments in the business of tracking how fat, or skinny, American children are. States receiving federal grants provided for in the bill would be required to annually track the Body Mass Index of all children ages 2 through 18. The grant-receiving states would be required to mandate that all health care providers in the state determine the Body Mass Index of all their patients in the 2-to-18 age bracket and then report that information to the state government. The state government, in turn, would be required to report the information to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for analysis.
The Healthy Choices Act–introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee–would establish and fund a wide range of programs and regulations aimed at reducing obesity rates by such means as putting nutritional labels on the front of food products, subsidizing businesses that provide fresh fruits and vegetables, and collecting BMI measurements of patients and counseling those that are overweight or obese.
I wonder if that “counseling” will be mandatory? No matter. When Nanny says jump, you ask “How high, Nanny?” If government wants information that is absolutely none of their business, they are going to coerce states into giving it to them.
This looks like another step in the direction of eliminating the confidentiality of medical information.
Now, if it was a voluntary program, I would have no problem with it, but mandatory tracking of all children without their consent is just creepy.
What other information will be gathered? Who will have access to it? What anonymity safeguards are there?
Cutting to the point; will insurance companies get access to this data and use it to exclude people from coverage?
Even if they don’t expand programs like this in the future (which I expect they will), there are still plenty of concerns.