As reported in the article, a patient who over the course of a week became unable to walk at all without shortness of breath. Her doctor told her to lose weight. The cause of the shortness of breath was blood clots on the lungs.

And in my personal experience, my mother experienced precisely what you don't think ever happens. A sinus infection went untreated for weeks after repeated doctor visits.

It is not that the doctor won't treat a sinus infection, it's that he won't _diagnose_ a sinus infection because the level of care drops when a patient is obviously overweight.

> As reported in the article, a patient who over the course of a week became unable to walk at all without shortness of breath. Her doctor told her to lose weight. The cause of the shortness of breath was blood clots on the lungs.

What some docs seem not to have learned is to ask the first question you learn to consider in tech support (and medicine is, in a sense, tech support for the human body) -- "what's changed?".

Unless the patient had a sudden and rapid change of weight that corresponds to the symptoms occurring, even if it is something whose onset was brought on by weight over time (or just made more likely by weight), its probably not the weight itself directly causing the symptoms, and if you don't properly diagnose the cause, you have no idea if losing weight is an appropriate remedy, irrelevant to the symptoms at hand, or something likely to cause changes in the body which exacerbate those symptoms.

What her doctor actually probably said was "the limits of what I can diagnose show that you would most likely see a great improvement with weight loss. I can refer you to a specialist who can conduct more tests (MRI etc) but those tend to be very expensive. I wouldn't recommend it without trying weight loss first, which is very important beyond the symptoms you came in for today".

> But therein lies the problem: being overweight is so _unbelievably_ unhealthy that most problems would be resolved simply by losing the weight.

Failure to properly diagnose the actual problems makes it harder for the doctor to assist the patient in actually losing weight. "Lose weight" is an outcome, not a course of action, and choosing the most medically appropriate course of action to achieve that outcome is down to coincidence if you decide to skimp on proper diagnosis just because you think that the patient needs to lose weight.

My neighbor is Head of Emergency for one of the largest hospitals in my city. He has said that a large part of Emergency Room cases are due to lifestyle choices whether it is Drugs, Alcohol or being Over Weight. Problems related to being over weight from Heart conditions, Diabetes, High Blood Pressure account for the largest portion of visits. He said the single most important thing you can do for your health is to maintain a healthy weight. It will prevent many ailments later in life.

He's right, but those are not "choices". Few people I know choose to be fat consciously. As opposed to drug users and smokers.

This kind of language is part of the problem, shifting blame onto actual patients.