Obesity's Huge Hidden Costs

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I would have posted just the link, but i had to copy and paste stuff from both the article and the slide show.. JSN FORBES.comObesity's Huge Hidden Costs Herper, 07.20.06, 6:00 AM ET Six in ten people in the United States are overweight, with a third crossing the boundary into obesity. The extra weight leads to at least 100,000 deaths annually. Obese people are at a much higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, arthritis and some cancers. Doctors call people obese if their weight in kilograms is more than 30 times bigger than their height in meters

squared. This is known as a high body mass index, or BMI. Even kids are getting fatter. Nineteen percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight, up from 4% in the 1970s. Doctors are turning to intensive behavioral therapy to try to keep these children from gaining more weight. The economic cost of all this extra fat is immense. Direct medical costs are easiest to calculate, coming in at $93 billion, or 9%, of our national medical bill. But there are other costs as well that are harder to pin down. "There's a tremendous social cost to obesity," says , an obesity researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Obese people are less likely to be given jobs, they're waited on more slowly, they're less likely to be given apartments, they're less likely to be sent to college by their parents." Obese people miss more work, costing

employers something on the order of $4 billion. Because people are fatter, airlines spend more on jet fuel, and the obese themselves spend more on gas. But these tend to be hidden from consumers themselves. Many researchers believe that it's actually cheaper, in our fast-food society, to eat a high-fat, high-calorie diet than it is to stay slim. Supersizing a meal at Mc's, Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken costs a consumer only 67 cents out of pocket. But after health costs and the price of extra gasoline are factored in, for some people, the price of the meal may have been effectively doubled. Finkelstein, a health economist at the nonprofit RTI Institute who has done extensive work with the Centers for Disease Control to measure the health costs of obesity, worries that there are no incentives for employers to deal with the

expanding waistlines of their workers. The reason: The average employee only stays at a job for 4.5 years, and it actually takes far longer for health problems due to being overweight to emerge. Unless a company holds onto its employees for decades and gives them great health benefits--such as, say, General Motors--it won't reap the benefits of helping employees lose weight. Moreover, Finkelstein says, employers never pay most obesity costs. Instead, they get passed onto the government through Medicare. Finkelstein will lay out this argument in a forthcoming article in the North Carolina Medical Journal. "Obese people cost lots of money," he says. "But young obese people really don't cost much at all. Why should an employer invest in obesity prevention to save Medicare money?" To make matters worse, Finkelstein says, there is very

little employers could do to prevent obesity in a world where people aren't stuck at a single job. He estimates that 9% of Americans are eligible for bariatric surgery, in which the stomach is tied off to make it smaller. (The procedure is probably best known for slimming celebs such as weatherman Al Roker and singer Carni .) But even that would cost most employers more than they would save. One speculative solution: In surveys, people have said that they would be willing to lose 10 pounds--and keep it off--if they were paid $225. If people can't see the savings of staying slim, maybe the solution is to make their pocketbooks heavier. Medical Cost Of Obesity: $93 billion About 32% of Americans are obese. That adds up to 9% of our national medical bill, or $93 billion. California, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas each spend more than $4 billion annually treating health problems that result from

obesity. Source: Centers for Disease Control Missed WorkCost: Up to $800 per person Obese workers miss more days of work than those who have kept a normal weight. On average, people miss about three days of work per year. But obese men miss five, and obese women in the heaviest body mass category miss eight days of work. Source: Finkelstein Jet FuelCost: $275 million The extra poundage packed on by the average American in the last decade required airplanes to use an extra 350 million gallons of fuel, according to an analysis by researchers at Cornell University. Source: Dannenberg et al, American Journal of Preventative Medicine SupersizingCost: Up to $7.72 per meal On average, getting a value meal at a fast-food restaurant costs 67 cents--an apparent bargain. But eating that meal comes with its own costs. For a man who is already obese, the

extra calories will mean he spends 5 cents extra on gasoline that year, an extra 36 cents on food in the future because of the weight he gained, and an extra $6.64 in annual health care costs. Source: Close and Schoeller, Journal of the American College of Nutrition Red InkCost Of Obesity To A 1,000 Person Firm: $285,000 When added up, the costs of paying for obesity-related health care and worker sick days add up quickly--totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 1,000 person business. Source: Finkelstein Your PocketTax Bill: $180 per year About half of the total cost of obesity-related health care, or about $45 billion, is paid by the government through its Medicare program, which covers senior citizens, or Medicaid, which helps the poor. For every American citizen, the out-of-pocket tax cost is an average $180. Source: Finkelstein Cheap FoodTotal

Change: -14% As the costs of overeating soar, the price of food has actually dropped since 1980--after rising steadily in the previous two decades. But most of the decrease is for stuff that's bad for you. Sweets and fats dropped 45% and 35% in price, respectively, while fish, fruit, vegetables and dairy products actually went up more than 50% in price. Source: Finkelstein