DISQUS

This is a bandaid solution to a bigger problem imo. If I lived in Australia, I'd be one of those folks offered that 170 dollars. Knowing now through reading, researching and talking with people, that 170 dollars is best spent in an education enviroment accessible to everyone just not a specific targeted slice of society. This would both prevent and help lower obesity.

There would be more then one person with a beer gut that would abuse the system, simply take the 170 and run or nod off in the required seminars and be done with it.

The money would be better spent opening, for lack of a better description, a government funded fitness program where people could not only use facilities but get counselling with an educated staff. People that genuinely wanted to become fit could seek out the program and gain it's benefits. The old saying "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" applies here.

I realize that overweight folks are sometimes a tax on the healthcare system, but imo it's coming to to a point where personal accounability has coming into the picture. People genuinely have to want to change and better themselves. That has to come within an person and cannot be dictated by anyone including the government.