Cost of obesity to U.S. healthcare system soaring

• Americans' widening waistlines are the main force behind rising U.S. health care costs, a new study shows.
• Between 1987 and 2002, the proportion of private health spending attributable to obesity increased more than tenfold, researchers report, from $3.6 billion to $36.5 billion.
• In the year 2002, obesity-related medical care spending accounted for 11.6 percent of all private health care spending compared to just 2 percent in 1987, concludes an article published today in Health Affairs.
• "We need to have the same type of societal attention on this issue that we gave to smoking 20 years ago," Thorpe added.
• Specifically, they were concerned with spending among privately insured adults aged 18 to 64 for the top 20 medical conditions.
• "We found overwhelmingly that the rise in private insurance spending was traced to the fact that we were treating more and more people with a variety of chronic health conditions," Thorpe said.
• In other words, more people are sick now than before; predominantly with conditions linked to obesity such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
• This means that in 2001, obese adults with private health insurance spent $1,244 more per person per year on health care than normal-weight adults.
• "Obesity is a very expensive health problem and, unlike some other health problems, doesn't appear to be topping out.
• It appears to be accelerating," said Dr. Tom Farley, co-author of Prescription for a Healthy Nation and professor of community health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans.
• This is a society-wide problem and we need society-wide solutions."
• Unfortunately, the debate on how to curb this growth in obesity and its related expense is focusing on the wrong issues, Thorpe said.