Health Secretary Sebelius:
They found U.S. obesity rates rose 37 percent between 1998 and 2006, driving an 89 percent increase in spending on treatments for obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis.
Obesity now accounts for 9.1 percent of all medical spending in the United States, up from 6.5 percent in 1998.
"What we found was the total cost of obesity increased from $74 billion to maybe as high as $147 billion today, so roughly double over that time period," said Finkelstein, whose study also was published in the journal Health Affairs.
An obese Medicare beneficiary spends $600 more a year on drug costs than a Medicare patient of healthy weight.
Source: Obesity costs U.S. health system $147 billion: study
"If there were an epidemic in this country of children getting cancer at the rate they are presenting with diabetes, I think we would have people crying out for some sort of national solution," said Sebelius.Taxing soda pop is the answer?"But weight problems -- because they don't present themselves as dramatic problems till later in life -- we have been slow to act."
"Reversing obesity is not going to be done successfully with individual effort," Frieden said. "We did not get to this situation over the past three decades because of any change in our genetics or any change in our food preferences. We got to this stage of the epidemic because of a change in our environment and only a change in our environment again will allow us to get back to a healthier place," he said.
Source: Almost 10 Percent of U.S. Medical Costs Tied to Obesity
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4 comments:
The major food corporations should foot the health bills. Though I suppose that could be equivalent to saying the ciggie companies have to pay for lung cancer treatment. However, if the food on shelves in the stores is crap and lots of folks think it's there because it's okay'd by the govt and the FDA, it must be okay to consume.
I agree with POD. Tax the hell out of junk food/fatty food. It is all just as health threatening as cigarettes, likely more since more people feel the need to indulge. This country needs to do something as it's only going to get worse, sadly.
It kills me that folks can (and do) use food stamps to buy all sorts of sorry crap, which leads to obesity and all the related health problems. We wind up paying for their poor food choices twice.
In our school system, the phys ed classes have been cut to the bone and yet they're now thinking of sending home BMI reports on our kids. How do you spell "hypocrite"?
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