As a former obese person and having many family and friends that are obese..the majority of fat people feel like skinny or in shape people don't understand what it's like to be overweight therefore won't know how to deal with it.. It makes no sense obviously since a doctor doesn't have to have to have a broken leg to understand how to treat it.
The flip of the coin however is that many doctors don't understand diet and nutrition.
ponysteaks comments are obviously ridiculous though. Obesity, alcoholism, diabetes, drug addictions.. etc are all self inflicted problems. Does that mean none of these people should receive healthcare? I'm not talking about free healthcare as I don't believe in it.
This problem runs parallel to almost all other problems in society. It's like poverty. You can't cure poverty by giving poor people money. It doesn't work. You can't cure obesity by saying "eat less". You have to educate, so the people effected can see why what they are doing doesn't work and why a successful approach will. Once people understand, chances of "buy-in" is that much greater.
And it seems the most common advice we see these days is huge caloric deficits rather than finding a balance between caloric reductions and expenditures. Its funny really. People that are 250lbs eating 2800 calories per day think the best option is to cut down to 1500 calories in order to lose weight, not realizing the metabolic consequences involved. Truth is, most fat people dont eat enough!
People are still adhering to this seemingly logical, yet misleading concept that "calories in/calories out" is all that matters and to lose fat means to be in deficit. We gotta bust that myth one soul at a time...