The American Psychiatric Association was taken over by homosexual activists back in 1974. Since then they have edited the concept of homosexuality being a mental disorder out of their bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The government fails to acknowledge, indeed, the government supports, the abuse of power that homosexual proponents within the APA have committed and continue to perpetrate. This is not a decision grounded in science. It is one grounded in personal preferences masquerading as science.

The govt. pulled this same crap with the last census. I gave only the most basic information on their survey because I felt that having an overall population census of the nation was a good idea. Because I didn't fill the form out in detail, they left phone calls and sent their lackeys to ring my door bell every day for a couple of weeks or so. I just ignored them and they eventually went away. I concur with Kevin348. Go ahead Federales, arrest me. Make my day! I'll see you in court.

LOL! Bonus items! How about a dog turd? Oh, right, that would be illegal. O.K. a close up photo of a steaming cow patty then.

It's no shameful thing to need a dictionary or a thesaurus. They have been and are the preferred tools of many an accomplished writer. What is shameful is to need a dictionary but not use it.

Who is admitting nothing can be done about the problem? Great, continue with the anti-obesity campaign. But that doesn't mean a system of rewards and punishments can't give people additional incentives to drop excess weight.

nice observation on the false dilemma, SP.

Mr. Hunter, I appreciate the satire.

Its a bit different for life insurance than for health insurance. In the case of skydiving, for instance, it is easy to prove that someone died as a result of skydiving and thus deny a pay out if that behavior violates the policy. I suppose you could slap someone with a larger, case specific health insurance deductible if they got injured skydiving. However, in order to increase someone's health insurance premiums based on skydiving behavior, it seems to me the insurer would have to be able to verify a pattern of such behavior. It would be easy for an individual to lie about being a serial skydiver in order to avoid paying a higher health insurance premium. Lying about being fat? Probably impossible to get away with.

worker, it probably isn't feasible or perhaps even possible to create a standard measurement for many of the behaviors you mention with regards to figuring health insurance costs. Determining if someone is overweight is determinable. Look at a person's BMI.

Let's focus on the obvious. People with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are considered overweight. That's not tough.