A new study has determined that body mass index (BMI) is an inadequate measurement of a person’s health and other factors — primarily exercise — should be taken into account when determining an individual’s health.
According to Minnesota Daily, employers typically use BMI as a metric to determine how much health insurance each employee requires. The Affordable Care Act allows employers to charge workers up to 30 percent of health care costs.
The logic is that an employee with a higher BMI is at a higher risk for health related ailments than an employee with a lower BMI — therefore, these “unhealthy” workers are liable for a significant portion of their healthcare costs.
However, a study conducted by University of California, Los Angeles, psychologists determined that BMI is an unreliable factor when determining an individual’s health. The study found that 20.7 million people with “normal” BMI were actually unhealthy. Additionally, 2 million people with a BMI that categorizes them as “very obese” were found to be healthy.
A BMI compares an individual’s weight to their height. However, it does not distinguish between muscle, bone, fat and water. Other factors, like age, ethnicity, gender, and physical fitness — which can play a huge role in an individual’s height and weight — are ignored as well.
With that in mind, company’s charging their employees a percentage of their healthcare costs based on their BMI starts to feel a bit unethical.
So how can you tell how healthy somebody is? Where as BMI is an unreliable metric, the amount of exercise an individual is getting is typically a good place to start when trying to determine how healthy they are.