Critics are calling out health-care provides who fat shame obese patients, arguing it leads to inferior care compared to non-obese patients.  "Their chief complaint is ascribed to their weight without a fulsome investigation of the other possibilities," Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, told The Current's guest host Megan Williams.  A 2015 Lancet study found health-care providers spend less time with obese patients and are more reluctant to give them screening tests. It also found health providers stereotype obese patients as less likely to adhere to medications, or follow medical advice.  "It is a real social justice issue... not just in the context of not getting proper testing, but also in potentially not having access to the same care and services that patients without obesity might have," said Freedhoff. He believes the dismissal of obese patients is embedded in a weight bias, with obesity being the only non-transferable disease doctors routinely "moralize."

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