Canada PoliticsDND pays $200,000 for troop weight-loss surgeries: report
The Department of National Defence has — for the past few years — come under fire for the way it spends taxpayer money.
They've been criticized for their procurement problems, expensive photo-ops and sick-leave abuses by senior bureaucrats.
But this expense is a little..ahem..heavy.
According to the National Post, the Department of National Defence spends about $200,000, every year, on "weight-loss surgeries for morbidly obese troops."
...the National Defence Department says it has recently been paying for a dozen or so morbidly obese troops a year to undergo weight-loss operations at private surgery clinics.
Military personnel must have a body-mass index of at least 35 — 6 feet and 260 lbs., for instance — and suffer from a related illness like diabetes or hypertension to qualify for the [surgery], which costs the Forces about $200,000 annually.
The military began funding the treatment about a decade ago, but the number of patients has picked up lately, with 12-13 receiving surgery in each of the last couple of years, said Maj. Nicole Meszaros, a spokeswoman for Canadian Forces health services.
The full article at the National Post website can be read here.
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Another story from last month, from Postmedia News' defence expert David Pugilese, might help explain the lowering levels of fitness within our military ranks.
Pugilese — citing an internal military recruitment analysis report — wrote that Canada's armed forces are "having to accept new recruits who are fatter, less educated and harder to motivate than previous generations because quality applicants are in dwindling supply."
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These stories definitely raise questions about the fitness level of Canadian troops.
In 2011, KIRO TV in Seattle Washington, had a 'big' story with the headline "Military spends $363,000,000 on weight loss surgery."
But they were talking about surgeries for the spouses and dependents of military personnel!
"Overweight active-duty soldiers and sailors either get fit through diet and exercise or get kicked out of the military," notes the report.
"Their spouses on the other hand, have another option: The Army loosely calls it The Surgical Pathway to Health."
KIRO states that the U.S. military officially banned bariatric procedures for active-duty officers in 2007 (although some weight-loss surgeries might have slipped through the cracks since then.)
But, I guess, in Canada, that whole diet and exercise thing is just waste of time?
(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)
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