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Obesity
Reported to Cost U.S. $93B a Year Wed,
May. 14, 2003
WASHINGTON - Obesity is costing
not only American lives, but dollars too. A study tallies that $93 billion per
year goes to treat health problems of people who are overweight. About
half that tab is picked up by the government through Medicare, which provides
care to the elderly, and Medicaid, which serves the poor. Overall,
spending attributed to excessive weight made up 9 percent of all medical
spending in 1998, researchers reported Wednesday on the Web site of the journal
Health Affairs. They
arrived at the figure by comparing the medical expenses of adults who are not
overweight with the expenses of those similar in most ways but who were
overweight or obese . The
difference in spending on people who are overweight and those of normal weight
were, for the most part, not statistically significant by themselves. But major
differences appeared for those who were obese: The average increase in spending
over a person of normal weight was $732 per year - 37.4 percent more. Altogether,
medical spending attributable to extra weight totaled $78.5 billion in 1998, or
$92.6 billion in 2002, inflation-adjusted dollars. The
financial burden now rivals that attributable to smoking, the authors say,
arguing that government and health insurance companies should offer incentives
to help people lose weight. "Although
some insurers subsidize memberships to health clubs to promote physical
activity, most do not include incentives to encourage weight loss," wrote
authors Eric Finkelstein and Ian Fiebelkorn of RTI International in North
Carolina and Guijing Wang of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta. The
study examined a representative sample of 9,867 adults ages 19 and older, with
data from the 1998 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the 1996 and 1997
National Health Interview Surveys. The research was paid for by the CDC. Weight
was assessed using body-mass index, a height-to-weight ratio. People with a BMI
of 30 or above are considered obese; those between 25 and 30 are considered
overweight. Someone who is 5 feet, 5 inches tall who weighs 150 pounds would have a BMI of 25. At a weight of 180 pounds, this person's BMI would be 30. |