Study: Taxes Pay for Most Obesity Costs

Taxpayers foot the doctor’s bill for more than half of obesity-related medical costs, which reached a total of $75 billion in 2003, according to a new study.

The public pays about $39 billion a year – or about $175 per person – for obesity through Medicare and Medicaid programs, which cover sicknesses caused by obesity including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, several types of cancer and gallbladder disease.

The study, to be published Friday in the journal Obesity Research, evaluates state-by-state expenditures related to weight problems. The research was done by the nonprofit group RTI International and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Obesity has become a crucial health problem for our nation, and these findings show that the medical costs alone reflect the significance of the challenge,” said Tommy Thompson, secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services. “Of course, the ultimate cost to Americans is measured in chronic disease and early death.”

States spend about one-twentieth of their medical costs on obesity – from a low of 4 percent in Arizona to a high of 6.7 percent in Alaska.

Obesity is everyones problem. Obese patients cause health care costs to increase (in a disproportionate fashion). Therefore the increasing obesity burden raises my insurance costs. And the obese raise our Medicare expenditures.

That we must as a society address obesity is not a new thought. Placing this battle into an economic perspective makes sense. I still believe that the obese should have to pay higher insurance premiums. You should be rewarded for a healthy lifestyle. A move to HSAs would place the burden of obesity on the obese. Maybe that would change behaviors.

Medpundit has a different take on this issue – Wages of Sin: