Orlando theme parks adapt to accommodate overweight guests

LostKause said:
...we are eating for well under $8, for two meals, including the meat and potatoes. Sometimes we have leftovers too.

Not that the added cost is necessarily significant, but you have to remember that it costs money to store, prepare, cook and clean up after a meal. Your refrigerator, stove/oven, dishwasher (or hot water heater), freezer (for storing leftovers... ewww) all cost money. Not to mention the storage bags/containers, paper towel/napkins and so on. Sure, the total added cost of the above may only be $1-4/ meal, but it does add up.

I eat with sticks, off rocks. Oh, and I clean up with leaves.

Hopefully, you can identify poison ivy. :)

For fun, do you play 'Rock, Leaf, Really Sharp Rock'?

Hmmm... Never thought of that, DjDaemon. I'm going straight to Burger King, right now! :)

Seriously though, cooking quarter pound burgers at home can still cheaper than two Quarter Pounder value meals. I would like to think that it would be healthier too.

I like to splurge sometimes too, and make a more expensive meal. My home made Strombolis are about $10 for 2-4 servings, which tastes better and is still cheaper than if I ordered and went to pick it up.

I've been doing this cooking at home thing for a short while now, and I am losing weight. I'm not even trying, and the food is awesome!

What's waiting in the sink for me when I get home is a reminder of why I hate cooking at home. Someone needs to invent disposable cookware. :)

Dishwashers are amazing inventions. Paper plates are too. :)

They sure are, but they cost money. It is cheaper to go out:)

Paper plates are great. Paper frying pans however... ;)

On health care: Employer sponsored health insurance is one of the worst ideas ever concocted. It started as a way to improve worker compensation in an age of wage controls, and morphed into this ridiculous system we have today, where nobody knows what medical care really costs, you can't buy health insurance based on your own requirements, and the whole system is designed to maximize costs. Hey, do you use your auto insurance to buy gas? And is your auto insurance tied to your employment? Then why do we treat medicine that way?

On cooking for one: It's a pain in the ass. It makes as much of a mess as cooking for a whole gang, buying small quantities is terribly expensive, and if you cook larger amounts, you either end up eating way too much, or ending up with leftovers that end up rotting in the back of the refrigerator.

On portion sizes: You know why portions are out of control? Value. That $0.69 small fry is really puny, and probably costs about a quarter. For about a nickel more, the restaurant can give you twice as many fries...and charge you $1.29. You're happier, and the profit margin goes from $0.44 to $0.99. And it is like that for every single menu item. Quite frankly the restaurant has to deal with the same dynamic that you do in your own kitchen. They just get paid for it.

On weight loss: Experience suggests that an easy way to lose weight is to spend a lot more time walking around in amusement parks! :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr. (Down 20# in the past year to about 248, so I have a way to go...)

I have also noticed at fast food places that they are trying to make the sizes sound smaller by changing the name.

Like at Wendy's, for soda it used to be, small 16 oz, medium 21 oz, biggie 32 oz, great biggie 44 oz. Now it is value 16 oz, small 21 oz, medium 32 oz, large 44 oz. Same with the fry sizes. I guess it sounds better to have a medium be 32 oz rather than call it a biggie.

I know it's processed and probably not the greatest but I have been trying to eat frozen Lean Cuisine or Smart Ones meals whenever I can. That way it has portion control and involves no work to prepare and it does help me lose weight.

RideMan said:
On health care: Employer sponsored health insurance is one of the worst ideas ever concocted.

That depends entirely on who your employer is. We just had a baby, and did not pay a dime in copayments or deductibles. Ditto for subsequent regular doctor visits and one ER visit.

Jeff said:
We just had a baby, and did not pay a dime in copayments or deductibles. Ditto for subsequent regular doctor visits and one ER visit.

I hate to seem like I'm putting words in Dave's mouth, but I think that's exactly the problem.

Jeff said:

RideMan said:
On health care: Employer sponsored health insurance is one of the worst ideas ever concocted.

That depends entirely on who your employer is. We just had a baby, and did not pay a dime in copayments or deductibles. Ditto for subsequent regular doctor visits and one ER visit.

For the individual, sounds like a great deal. For society, its a disaster. Econ 101 tells you exactly where prices would go (and have gone) with such a system. But then everyone acts surprised as if there is some unknown reason why medical costs have soared.

It seems the rising cost of health care has at least something to do with both the lobbyists and a lack of oversight (which are likely related).

If these large insurance companies actually had to compete in a regulated market, the cost would probably not be as high.

Gonch and I are in agreement on yet another financial discussion - isn't that one of the Signs of the Apocalypse? ;)

Seriously, any time I incur a cost to another party (like my insurace company, or the government, or my employer), there should be a financial incentive for me to save money, and some disincentives for me to be wasteful. I'm in NO way suggesting that health care is wasteful...but, if I can lose 15-20# and not need the blood pressure medication my doctor "recommended"...then isn't it better for society (and the payee) to have me lose the weight. Nonethless, I'm sure many of us are/would be on the pills - in large part because it's easier and less time-consuming on my Dr.'s part to simply write up a scrip and get to the next patient...more profitable for my Dr., and for Big Pharma, too. Everybody wins! ;)

Wait, because my employer offers full coverage, that drives costs up? Better check your "Econ 101" books on that one. There are a number of reasons that their cost per employee are significantly lower than the cost for other companies. The sheer pool size is part of it, but they also run a ton of preventative programs (including financial incentives), frequent screening and testing, a 24/7 phone service to help you with medical needs of all kinds (in one example, they sent a doctor to a friend's house because it was cheaper than the ER), zero physical paperwork by the company (including adding/removing dependents and options), etc. It's crazy efficient and it does its best to reduce visits for care.

No, Gonch, you're right. Jeff's example is precisely the kind of thing I'm talking about. He's got a really good health insurance plan, and his employer pays for it. I have a health insurance plan that is actually pretty sensible (and probably illegal under the terms of the recent "reform" plan), and my employer pays for it. For us, that's great.

But overall it makes no sense. It doesn't even make sense from an underwriting perspective. Actuarially, the CoasterBuzz reader pool is probably a more accurate risk pool for my health insurance than my employer's employee base. My premiums are based on the number of people in my workplace who have chronic illnesses, not on my likelihood of contracting one myself.

It would make far more sense for my employer to pay me the money they now spend on my medical insurance, and then for me to buy my insurance outright. But it would only make far more sense to do that if that were the customary way of doing it; if my employer unilaterally decided to stop offering medical insurance and increased our salaries accordingly, I would not be able to afford the same level of coverage, and I would see a *massive* tax increase.

Likewise, my insurance is a plan by which I have to pay most of my medical expenses out of pocket. But I have to have the insurance because without it the bills end up being significantly higher...not because insurance isn't paying a portion, but because I get to pay what the insurance company would have paid if they were paying the bill. Without them, I would have to pay the billed amount, which is about 300% higher. How does that make any sense? And in a world where all of the money is hidden and everything appears to be "free", what incentive is there for anybody to try and contain costs?

Personally, I think the rules ought to be changed so that instead of providing medical insurance directly, employers should put what they now pay in premiums into HSA accounts (NOT MSAs, but that's another story) which employees could then use to either buy their own insurance, or to pay for medical expenses, or both. Employers could serve as brokers for medical insurance, but shouldn't buy it directly on behalf of employees. That would go a long way towards exposing the money flow and restoring some sanity to the health care system in this country.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Without other incentives to reduce costs (such as those Jeff mentioned in last last post but not the post before it), externalizing the costs to the patients (with no/low deductibles/co-pays) will result in increased costs. Why should the patient care what the costs are if they are not paying them? If you look at procedures that are not covered by insurance (such as laser eye surgery), the costs have come down (and the quality has gone up) because patients shop on price and doctors compete on price. What other service/product exists where neither the person buying the product/service nor the person selling/providing it knows the price at the time of delivery?

Now there's an excellent point!

The most aggravating and annoying bills I have to pay are the ones to my medical providers. Why? Because I pay those using a credit card from an HSA. But I *can't* pay those bills at the time of service when I can just hand the card to the receptionist. I have to wait for the insurance company to process the claim, to disallow most of the charge, and then for the provider to send me a bill. I can't pay at the time of service because neither I nor the service provider has any idea how much I owe...for the exact same service that I received the last four times I was in.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.