Source/Credit: The New York Daily News
By Jim Farber | November 19, 2009
Put down that pudding pop, America.
You’re getting fatter. And it’s costing us all plenty of dough.
According to new data reported by USA Today, obesity will cost Americans roughly $334 billion in medical expenses by 2018. That would account for 21% of the nation’s total health-care spending.
Those figures are based on the projection that in a decade 43% of us will be obese, a term defined by when an individual is 30 pounds of more over a healthy weight level.
The added girth puts a person at risk for diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
The fallout from those diseases has become newly relevant as America debates health care reform, and the cost to us all.
"Obesity is going to be a leading driver in rising health-care costs," says Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the department of health policy and management at Emory University in Atlanta. Thorpe did this special analysis on obesity for America's Health Rankings, the 20th annual assessment of the nation's health on a state-by-state basis.
"There is a tsunami of chronic preventable disease about to be unleashed into our medical-care system which is increasingly unaffordable," says Reed Tuckson of United Health Foundation, sponsor of the report with the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention.
The figures lead to the following conclusions:
- An obese person will have an average of $8,315 in medical bills a year in 2018 compared with $5,855 for an adult at a healthy weight. That's a difference of $2,460.
- If the percentage of obese adults doesn't change but stays at the current rate of 34%, then excess weight will cost the nation about $198 billion by 2018.
- If the obesity rate continues to rise until 2018, then Colorado may be the only state with less than 30% of residents who are obese.
- More than 50% of the population in several states could be obese by 2018: Oklahoma, Mississippi, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio and South Dakota.
Health economist Eric Finkelstein, co-author of “The Fattening of America,” told USA Today that medical costs won't ease unless Americans make a concentrated effort "to slim down by improving their diet and exercise patterns."
Read original post here: Forget 2012 - fear 2018, when 43 percent of Americans will be obese, according to data projections
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