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.