Medical Costs of Obesity Double in Last 10 Years

Yet another reason why health care reform is critical to the nation’s economic prosperity as well as its wellbeing: the medical costs of obesity are estimated to have doubled in the last 10 years, with as much as half of the cost covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

According to a paper published yesterday in Health Affairs, in 1998 the medical costs of obesity were estimated to be as high as $78.5 billion, with roughly half financed by Medicare and Medicaid. The paper’s authors now find that

The increased prevalence of obesity is responsible for almost $40 billion of increased medical spending through 2006, including $7 billion in Medicare prescription drug costs.

Our overall estimates show that the annual medical burden of obesity has risen to almost 10 percent of all medical spending and could amount to $147 billion per year in 2008.

Other studies have also quantified the extent to which obesity influences aggregate heath spending. For example, Kenneth Thorpe and colleagues found that obesity was responsible for 27 percent of the rise in inflation-adjusted health spending between 1987 and 2001.

As previously reported here, the OECD says the obesity rate among US adults (34.3% in 2006) is the highest in OECD countries.

Comments

[LJBinvestor:]

While I agree something must be done to move people to healthier living, I disagree that using only BMI or weight as indicators of poor health are wrong. Lets look at blood pressure, cholestrol, other blood test levels, smoking, alcohol consumption, family medical history and physical activity before placing any individual in a "classification". I know many 180 lb men that are in very poor health and likewise many 250 lb men that work out 3-4 times a week and have excellent medical readings. Its also very ironic that government wants to get more people under health insurance, yet a large percentage of these folks may also be classified as "obese", high cost health clients that would only increase the cost of health care further. Clearly we need to step away from drugging the population and incent people to move to better food diets, better vitamin intake and more rewards for an active life instead of a life of inactivity.

Jul 28 08:18 AM

[Karen Consumer:]

I am defined as clinically obese because I weight more than 100 pounds of my ideal weight (i'm female 5'6" and weigh 268 pounds, my ideal weight being between 135-160 lbs). Before I lost my job, I was sitting on a bank of 880 sick hours, meaning during my 9.75 years with the city I worked 880 hours more than my counterparts, allowing me to bank 880 sick hours. So I'm not the one adding to this number. Also, when you consider how many professional athletes (the NFL and AFL come to mind) fall under the obese category thanks to the inflexible BMI, I don't think "obesity" is the evil everyone wants it to be.

I do note that it doesn't say what the ages are of this obese population. I was thinking that since the baby boomer generation (1946-1964) starts retiring shortly, they're probably the ones that are pushing this figure (both obesity and cost) up. But you can't say that getting old costs more, that's not politically correct (didn't somebody say 50 was the new 30?).

Medical costs go up with age, fat or not. Menopause isn't caused by fat. Glaucoma isn't caused by fat. Alzheimers, well, no one is quite sure what causes that. These add to medical costs. Getting old is expensive. Unless you're ready to outlaw old age, medical costs are going to go up a while until the baby boomers start dying out (hopefully because of old age and not government supported euthanasia like in Europe). Period.

Jul 28 02:34 PM

[TCK:]

The cost of obesity is only one side of the equation.

Does anyone think health care costs would go down if all obeise people lost weight and lived to the age of 100 ?

Jul 29 07:20 AM