As we already know – thanks to the numerous newspaper columnists, obesity experts and NHS managers gloomily informing us – the NHS is going to go bankrupt because our nation is growing so spectacularly porky. So, in an attempt to avert this catastrophe, there is a new trial scheme, launched this week in Kent, to pay the obese to lose weight. The thinking behind this would seem to be that five hundred-odd pounds is better spent now, if it averts thousands of pounds spent later on the same patient when they develop diabetes, heart problems or cancer. Patients could receive up to £425, with half the money being doled out each time a significant amount is lost and half given six months later when the weight has been kept off.
Not unnaturally, the scheme has roused quite a lot of anger from various quarters. Ann Widdecombe, the Tory MP who achieved slightly more notoriety than usually granted to ministers when she took part in ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club, has questioned whether the government should be spending money on weight loss at a time when cancer sufferers are struggling to get certain drugs. The Tax Payer’s Association has also been heavily critical of the trial, arguing that “'People pay their taxes for the sick to be treated, not for the nanny state to bribe them to do something they should have done off their own bat. When people who are ill through no fault of their own are struggling to get appointments and drugs, it's unfair for money to be allocated to people who simply need to choose to exercise more and eat less.”
Perhaps this is true, and perhaps it is also true that people will take the money and six months later revert back to wolfing down the Big Macs. Nonetheless, both Widdecombe and Mark Wallace (the spokesperson for the TPA) have missed one crucial point – whether the obese are deserving or undeserving, whether they ‘choose’ to be fat or not, if nothing is done to stop the rising tide of obesity then in 50 years time, there will be no money for any treatment whatsoever, whether for obesity or cancer. If we live in a tax-paying state and believe in the NHS we are tied to each other, regardless of the maladies being treated. This means that if the scheme works and ultimately the Kent Health Trust saves money, then we must be prosaic and accept it. However, if the recipients put all the weight back on then we should expect a repayment. If this is not forthcoming we should send in the bailiffs!