Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Too fat to fly coach? Well here's a first class ticket. Government bureaucratic insanity. Do you know of any business that would do this?

Health and Human Services officials ‘too fat’ to fly coach

WASHINGTON — They’re living off the fat of the land.
Officials of the federal Department of Health and Human Services — the agency that’s supposed to be fighting obesity — got to fly first class at taxpayers’ expense by claiming they were too overweight to be crammed into coach.
HHS officials took 7,000 first-and business-class flights between 2009 and 2013, according to figures first reported by the Washington Examiner.
In 5,100 cases, they got medical exemptions — including obesity, back injuries, or circulation issues — for the premium seats.
“If someone is obese and too large for a seat, the doctor can put in a request,” HHS spokeswoman Kristin Gillham told The Post, adding that an agency travel official must approve each request.
“It’s not a rubber stamp approval. It’s not as easy as, ‘My back hurts and I have a doctor’s note,’ ” she explained.
The upgrades cost $31 million.
Meanwhile, HHS is investing in research to try to get Americans to slim down.
In September, it announced $212 million to battle chronic diseases, including obesity.

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