Obesity Health Costs Surge To $147 Billion Per Year
The health costs of obesity in the United States are as high as $147 billion per year, or nearly 10 percent of all medical spending, according to a new study released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
They study found that obese people spend an additional $1,429, or 40 percent more, per year in healthcare costs than their normal weight counterparts.
The research also showed that the proportion of all annual medical costs attributed to obesity increased from 6.5 percent in 1998 to 9.1 percent in 2006. This figure includes payments by Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers and spending on prescription drugs.
“It is critical that we take effective steps to contain and reduce the enormous burden of obesity on our nation”, said CDC Director Thomas Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., while presenting the study on Monday at the CDC’s Weight of the Nation conference in Washington, DC.
"Reversing obesity is not going to be done successfully with individual effort," he said, “it will be done successfully as a society."
The CDC issued its first comprehensive set of evidence-based recommendations to help communities combat obesity through programs and policies that promote healthy eating and physical activity.  Known as the “Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention Project”, the initiative includes 24 recommended environmental and policy level strategies to prevent obesity, including efforts to improve access to healthy food within poor neighborhoods and combating sedentary lifestyles that contribute to obesity.
“These new recommendations and their proposed measurements are a powerful and practical tool to help state and local governments, school districts, and local partners take necessary action,” said Frieden.
“The strategies promote the availability of affordable healthy food and beverages, support healthy food and beverage choices, encourage breastfeeding, encourage physical activity or limit sedentary activity, support safe communities that support physical activity, and encourage communities to organize for change,” wrote the CDC in a press release about the initiative.
More than 26 percent of Americans are obese, meaning they have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. BMI is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared.Â
In the current study, Eric Finkelstein of the non-profit Research Triangle Institute and researchers at the CDC and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality analyzed medical cost data from 1998 and 2006. They found that obesity rates in the U.S. surged 37 percent between 1998 and 2006, resulting in an 89 percent increase in spending on treatments for obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and arthritis.
"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," Finkelstein told Reuters.
An obese Medicare patient spends $600 more a year on prescription drugs than a Medicare beneficiary of healthy weight.
Frieden said that soda and sugar-sweetened beverages "play a particular role in the obesity epidemic,” and that a tax on soft drinks might reduce consumption. However, that is not a position held by the Obama administration, he said.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, said the new study further demonstrates that prevention and wellness initiatives should be included in plans to reform the U.S. health system.
"Report after report shows that if we fail to take meaningful steps now on prevention of chronic disease like obesity, healthcare costs will continue to spiral out of control," said Harkin in a statement.
The CDC study, entitled: “Annual Medical Spending Attributable to Obesity: Payer- and Service-Specific Estimates”, appears online today in the journal Health Affairs.  It can be viewed at http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.28.5.w822/DC1.
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