….whether you like it or not! And especially if you’re an oldster on Medicare.

Cuz making you lose weight is one of the ways our president plans to pay down that $1.5 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office says his health plan will cost:

Junkfood Science quotes Obama’s speech at the Organizing America National Health Care Forum last week:

If we went back to the obesity rates that existed back in the 1980s, the Medicare system over several years could save as much as a trillion dollars. I mean, that’s how much our obesity rate has made a difference in terms of diabetes and heart failure and all sorts of preventable diseases. And so what we want to do is to, first of all, in health care reform, in the legislation, encourage prevention and wellness programs by saying that any health care plan out there has to provide for free checkups, prevention, and wellness care. That’s got to be part of your deal, part of your package. And that way nobody has got an excuse not to go in and get a checkup.

Junkfood Science continues:

It’s similar to the speech he gave to the American Medical Association on June 15th (covered here), in which he claimed preventive health screenings, mammograms and management of health risk factors, like a “Healthy Measures” program, can prevent the costliest chronic diseases — cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lung disease and strokes. Most important of all under his plans is ridding the country of obesity. “It means going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside,” he said. “It also means cutting down on all the junk food that’s fueling an epidemic of obesity which puts far too many Americans, young and old, at greater risk of costly, chronic conditions,” he said.

As HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at last month’s Weight of the Nation, the government’s preventive wellness policies to transform our healthcare system plan “to put the nation on a weight loss diet.” At the heart of President Obama’s healthcare reform is fighting obesity, she said, which is why the government has made preventive wellness one of its top priorities.

Aren’t you looking forward to the government forcing you to go to the doctor for medical checkups? Having your eating habits monitored by Dr. Obama and Nurse Sebelius? (“That slice of cake you had for dessert last night went straight to your hips. And about that gym membershiop you don’t use….”)

Not to mention the sheer absurdity of the the idea that weight control–or any other form of preventive medicine–could save the government $1 trillion. ($1 trillion! That’s $1,000,000,000,000. Don’t you love the way the Obama administration and its fans enjoy tossing around unimaginably huge numbers? $3 trillion here, $9 trillion there, and you’re talking about real money!)

Earth to Obama: Preventive medicine, “wellness care” and other medical treatment for people who aren’t sick cost money–which is why Doug Elmendorf, director of the CBO, wrote on Aug. 7 that that “researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings.”

As Charles Krauthammer (a physician himself) writes:

A study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, “if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100% success,” the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country’s total medical bill by 162%. Elmendorf additionally cites a definitive assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine that reviewed hundreds of studies on preventive care and found that more than 80% of preventive measures added to medical costs…

Me, I’m looking forward to spending my old age counting calories with Nurse Sebelius.