Mary Margaret Olohan, DCNF

A top bundler for 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg once pushed a “Cash for Fatties” program that would pay people to lose weight.

Wendy Wanderman, who has raised at least $25,000 for Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, proposed a government program in 2009 that would target “Republican red states,” the Daily Beast reports. Wanderman also served on the National Finance Committee for former President Barack Obama.

“We’ve seen the success of the Cash for Clunkers program,” Wanderman wrote in an article posted by HuffPost Sept. 3, 2009. “I’d like to see the administration go forward with a program called Cash for Fatties.”

Wanderman cited a report from the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that found that the five states with the highest percentages of overweight people were Republican states. Wanderman wrote that “people in the thinner and mostly bluer states are paying for the healthcare costs of all of the uninsured and Medicare covered individuals in these red states.”

“It’s no secret that the more overweight a person is, the greater likelihood that his/her medical costs increase,” Wanderman wrote. “Thus, the blue states in which we want a public option, are paying the costs of the red states where they oppose it.”

The Buttigieg donor explained that only “heavily overweight” people could register for the program, which she promised would drop medical costs for overweight individuals.

“If you enroll in a weight loss program like Weight Watchers, (the gov’t will pay for it whether you have health insurance or not) and lose a significant amount of weight, the gov’t will pay you a fee. If you keep the weight off after 6 months or a year, the gov’t will give you an additional payment.”

Neither Wanderman nor the Buttigieg campaign responded to requests for comment regarding “Cash for Fatties.”

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