(I write a blog called Skipping Dessert about my experiences in seeking a healthier lifestyle and losing weight. The following was originally published there. Please take a look if you're so-inclined.)
I've known for a long time that HCA (Hospital Corporation of America) was one of the bad guys. As a refresher, it was heavily linked to Bill Frist and his family. I hadn't given HCA much thought until this past weekend I had lunch in a pub that used to be a favorite of mine many years ago.
While we were there the local top-40 hits radio station was playing, loudly. I never, ever listen to top-40 radio, so it was a bit of an education. One of the things I learned was that I’m not missing anything by never, ever listening to top-40 radio (I listen to a lot of music, just on iTunes and satellite radio). Frankly that wasn’t a surprise.
What did surprise me was that fully half the ads I heard were for diet clinics and weight-loss gimmicks. Now remember, this is an all-hits station. It’s target listeners are 12-24 years of age. And the ads they listen to (when they listen to the radio – young people, as a group, don’t, but that’s another story) are about quick and easy ways to lose weight. With a consistent “it’s not your fault” message. Wow. Nothing about healthy eating or exercise, just, “come give us money and you won’t have to worry about that unsightly muffin-top anymore.”
(HCA badness beyond the fold ...)
Most disturbing was the ad for weight-loss SURGERY. Yes, gastric bypass and lap band surgery, marketed HARD to teenagers. Now, their website says you have to be 18 and significantly overweight. But they’re running an ad in heavy rotation on the all-hits radio station to sell it. And who is marketing this evil, horrible, really terrifically awful idea? One of the area’s largest and most-respected hospitals, North Florida Regional Medical Center. Which is an HCA hospital. I’m sure if it were not potentially profitable in the extreme, HCA wouldn’t allow the ad expenditure.
There are cases where this kind of surgery is necessary. But it’s surgery! They cut your belly open and tie-off most of your stomach! And if you don’t address whatever it was that made you want to eat the way you ate to gain all that weight in the first place … the portion of your stomach that you sectioned-off to be your new stomach will expand and you will get fat again. And then what? More surgery? Heck, HCA could set up a revolving door for this stuff. Maybe a card-punch system for frequent lap-banders.
If I haven’t made it clear by now, I believe marketing weight-loss surgery to kids (ok, teens, at best) is, in a word, immoral. There are (extreme) cases where this kind of surgery makes sense, but your doctor (pediatrician, in this case) should refer you, not the ad between the crappy dance tunes. If only those extreme cases where it makes medical sense were accepted they wouldn’t have an ad budget to sell them.
I hope HCA, their stockholders, the radio station (and the rep who sold it) made a bunch of money with this ad schedule, and I hope they enjoy spending it. ’Cause Karma? It’s a bitch.