BALLOONING waistlines mean ballooning healthcare costs. Part of the phenomenal rise in what Americans spend on healthcare is due to rising obesity, according to a study published on Monday.
Since 1987, the cost of health insurance in the US has risen by 60 per cent. This has led to fewer workers receiving coverage from their companies, and made it more difficult for businesses that still pay for employees鈥� health costs to remain competitive.
Now Kenneth Thorpe and his team at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, have shown that the rise in costs is being fuelled by the explosion in the number of people who are overweight, coupled with more aggressive tactics for diagnosing and treating obesity-related diseases. Spending on these diseases has risen 10-fold since 1987, and now accounts for almost 12 per cent of the country鈥檚 healthcare budget. Each obese individual costs the system $1244 a year more than their non-obese counterparts.
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鈥淢ost of the cost increase is due to the fact that more people are being treated,鈥� says co-author David Howard. Not only are more people obese, but also new screening methods and treatments are available and are targeted at this growing group.
The pattern is most marked for conditions such as depression, diabetes, hyperlipidaemia and high blood pressure, which are all linked to obesity. Thorpe says that the costs of the obesity epidemic fall on taxpayers, employers and workers. The three groups will have to tackle the problem together, as they have tackled smoking in the past, he says. 鈥淲e need to have the same type of broad-based attack on this problem.鈥�
