I've been researching into healthy living and healthy eating, and run into epidimiological and lab studies which show that people who don't consume milk and animal proteins are much less prone to get cancer, diabetes, etc. I'm not sure this is the place to go into scientific details, but many folks take it for a fact. What if you could put your money where your mouth is? I propose the vegan healthcare plan - reduced rate plan for healthier people. How do you know for sure they're really going to stay healthier than average? you can't. but if you believe it is so, you now have a great investment option. now the only problem is finding out if people are cheating on their diets... I guess that could be done somehow.
-- supershnitzel, Mar 31 2009

Paper on the subject http://www.ncbi.nlm...nel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Lactovegetarianism is the solution of the day [loonquawl, Apr 01 2009]

interesting study http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html
sadly i can't link to the study itself [supershnitzel, Apr 01 2009]

The second problem is proving a person lived vegan. And is vegan really central to the idea? Isn't vegetarian good enough?

Maybe this is a business PETA should get in to.

(I should note that I'm all for this as long as I'm not subsidizing it. Let the vegans/vegetarians/whatever get together and insure themselves)
-- phoenix, Mar 31 2009


Vegans are supposed to have detectable physiological differences, such as different EEG, but i don't know more than that. It's also been suggested that the proportions of fatty acids in their bodies are different.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 31 2009


"Vegans are supposed to have detectable physiological differences, such as different EEG..."
Tough to pin that down after their dead.
-- phoenix, Apr 01 2009


@pheonix - the research I looked at found that common carcinogens act together with casein (a milk protein) and other proteins to promote disease. so that would mean you'd have to go vegan.
-- supershnitzel, Apr 01 2009


Insurance and health care must be equal for all. I could be vegan and do extreme sports in the weekend injuring myself very often. I can smoke and drink and die of trainaccident aged 90 in ferfect health.

Yes, there is a relation between lungcancer and smoking but many smokers do not get lungcancer, many non-smokers do get lungcancer and even the smokers who do get lungcancer cannot be sure they actually got it from smoking. So there is no basis to make healthcare more expensive for smokers.

Likewise, your idea is discrimination of the worst kind. It seems alright and proper at first but if implemented people get seriously butscrewed from there on in.
-- zeno, Apr 01 2009


Why would anyone invest in the healthcare of vogons?
-- Spacecoyote, Apr 01 2009


zeno - So apply the idea to life insurance! in my country healthcare is free anyway. but I actually have extra coverage because basic coverage isn't enough, especially with diseases like cancer etc.
-- supershnitzel, Apr 01 2009


First of all, i was vegan for twenty years and am still close to being vegan. I don't like this idea because it's unfair on the people who don't opt out. There are healthy and unhealthy vegan and non-vegan diets. A diet including large quantities of organ meat from wild sources is very likely to be a healthier diet than a poor vegan diet based on simply replacing meat with TVP. If you were on a wild meat diet, you would be healthier as a result of your own dietary choices, quite likely to be made on an ethical basis if it were like that, but you'd still be paying higher premiums, but a vegan eating large amounts of TVP and with a consequent higher risk of the likes of breast cancer would be paying less. That's really not fair.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 01 2009


Nothing is fair. History has shown that even fairness is unfair.
-- Spacecoyote, Apr 01 2009


// many folks take it for a fact // - is that supposed to be a pro or a contra argument?

Could you link to some of these studies? The ones i ran into seem to be very focussed ones (one variation of diet, one type of cancer).

I'd like to see increased cost for meat-eaters as well (for environmental reasons), but i would only support increase of insurance cost if the link was absolutely proven.
-- loonquawl, Apr 01 2009


I agree, but this reminds me of people opting out of tax when they don't perceive a benefit from it (yes, i know what i said elsewhere, but i'm not going there right now). If i would prefer not to pay for education because i don't appear to use it, that would be unfair because i benefit from living in a society where there are engineers, doctors, solicitors and generally literate and numerate people. Every time i get the right change in a shop, i benefit from education. Likewise, i benefit from other people being healthy, so i wouldn't expect people to pay more health insurance when they're working for me just because of their lifestyle choices. Nobody's perfect. I've known a lot of vegans who are complete gits, and in fact the most unpleasant people i've met (speaking as someone who was once kidnapped) were vegan.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 01 2009


Most taxes are specific to some underlying object : Tax on land, tax on retail, tax on gasoline - so if there was some undeniable link between a diet and health, this might be used to rationalize taxing the stuff not belonging to this diet. Yet, as was pointed out a lot in this discussion, diet and lifestyle are close-knit, so the healthy-because-vegan connection might not work in people who go vegan for purely monetary reasons, or the current vegans might be mentally disposed to behaviour outside of dietary choices that makes them more or less healthy (for themselves and, reading [nineteenthly]s anno, others)
-- loonquawl, Apr 01 2009


Funny you should mention the tax on unhealthy food, as i posted that on another ideas bank recently. I think the problem there would be to ensure it happened without being influenced by a lobby of some kind with its own agenda.
Some vegans are nice people, lots of them in fact. Others are self-righteous and judgmental, and some of them are wedded to a simplistic world view or overvalue the idea of veganism to the exclusion of all else. Such people also exist in other walks of life, as it were, and vegans don't have a monopoly on not being sympathetic. However, if we're discussing health, let's not forget mental health. I've been vegan. I lost my sense of smell, had olfactory hallucinations and started to develop peripheral neuropathy. That was after researching nutrition thoroughly and not all vegans get that. I think probably i don't absorb cobalamine as well as some people and i'm not suggesting that would happen to most people on the diet. Leaving that aside, whereas some people are eccentric or non-conformist and therefore gravitate to particular independent positions, others do the same because they have irrational beliefs. When you say vegans are healthier, that may be true in a physical sense on the whole, but i wouldn't be surprised if the picture of their mental health was less rosy. And remember, I am very nearly vegan and it's a central part of my lifestyle.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 01 2009


Yes, i'm not saying they're a shower of bastards, just that some people are self-righteous and obsessive, some of those are vegan and people with mental health problems tend to drift towards marginal positions.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 01 2009


I eat mostly vegan animals, if that helps.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 01 2009


The problem with Vegans is that it is essentially a religion, but it lacks a pope, grand dragon, or other central authority. With some central organization the Vegans could insure themselves. There could also be a council that would sort out weighty matters of import to vegans, such as whether or not yeast is an animal.
-- bungston, Apr 01 2009



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