Is there a Sin Tax in Medical Care?

Thesis: People who smoke, drink, or are overweight get poorer medical care because doctors simply diagnose the cessation of these "sins" rather than looking in depth to the cause of the problem, which may/may not be the sin itself.

I'm not saying that the abovementioned don't increase the chances of health problems, but I'm saying that (1) they don't always, (2) the medical field inflates them and (3) may possibly be drawing false conclusions about their risk in your medical diagnosis.

On a trip I took in 2005, I got a back injury while on a crazily forceful amusement park ride that, I think, gave me some kind of whiplash. Direcly after I got off the ride, I had the first back spasm of my life in the bathroom of a restaurant near the ride. Even though it really fucking hurt I didn't think anything much of it because it was short. Following the accident, I had back stiffness, but a year later, I woke up one day and had another back spasm (just like the one after the ride, but this time it didn't go away). Even moving my arms sent elecrifying pain all throughout my body. I had back spasms for about 7 days and they slowly subsided until I was able to walk again 9 days after the initial one. Since then, I've had pretty much no respite from some level of back pain.

My chart:
Age: 27
Sex: Female
Height: 5'7''
Weight: 230 pounds (mostly in breasts ;))
Smoke? No
Drink? No
Drug Use? No
High Blood Pressure? No
Food Allergies? No
Drug Allergies? No
Notes: Gets no less sleep than a narcoleptic grandmother, doesn't have a stressful job, no children, higher than average resistance to infection, eat no processed food, and was born into a family where everyone's fat.

When I go to the doctor about my back pain all they recommend is that I lose weight. And despite my re-telling of the injurious ride, the diagnosis doesn't change. On a recent visit to a Kaiser doctor in San Francisco - where I made an appointment to discuss preventive pain care for my back - she said she couldn't help me until a further injury had happened, but the best way to prevent it was to lose weight, and then handed me a dietician recommendation. If the weight didn't cause the pain in the first place, then why do I always get the same answer?

Despite my having discussed my back problem with 3 doctors, the only person who has even recommended an X-ray has been my chiropractor. She's great, and says she doesn't care how big I am as long as I follow her directions on back care.

Testing my theory, I've asked some sinful friends about their experience with the medical system. Just last night I had dinner with a fellow big-boned femme who'd been forced to take multiple gestational diabetes tests during her pregnancy despite having no symptoms of the illness and having had negative results on previous screenings. When, in fact, doctors don't know exactly what causes gestational diabetes, couldn't her time at the doctor be more effectively used? Read about G.D. here.

I have a few other stories, but I encourage you to do a bit of asking yourself. Maybe you have an experience where you felt your actual condition was overlooked because of other habits. And I recommend you call your doctor out on it. I definitely will the next time it happens.