Obesity a crushing weight on U.S. health care

Obesity is the elephant in the room of health care reform, a public health catastrophe that kills more than 100,000 Americans a year, cost the nation $147 billion last year and threatens to shorten U.S. life expectancy for the first time since the Civil War.

Whatever Washington does this year to reduce medical spending seems likely to be swamped by the nation's rising weight. Obesity lurks behind the top chronic illnesses - heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and colon, breast and prostate cancers, among many others - whose treatments routinely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One of every three Americans, and one of every four Californians, is obese and rates are rising at an alarming pace, particularly among children, experts say.

"Rising obesity rates are increasing health care expenditures per person in a way that is going to be very difficult to finance," said Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor and health economist at Stanford University's Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

"Unless there is some vast improvement in the efficiency of the health care system - and I mean vast - we're going to be spending a lot more just because a lot more people will have diabetes" and other obesity-related diseases, he said.

Obesity is all but impossible to treat. Prevention is the only cure. Yet while health care legislation in Congress would increase spending on prevention of chronic disease, it does little to tackle the underlying obesity epidemic directly. Most of the bills are silent on what many health experts contend would be one of the most effective weapons: a tax on soda.

Junk-food taxes are part of a push to adapt the successful fight against tobacco to the more complex obesity epidemic. Food, unlike tobacco, is necessary to life, and cheap food has all but eliminated hunger among the poor; yet there are many striking parallels between unhealthy eating and smoking.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/08/16/MN8F194A71.DTL#ixzz0OOwBhWSh

Gym memberships.

"where's the personal responsibility in health care?" Because I see a whole lotta fat people waving nasty signs in the air at those Town Halls. . .

She did drink a lot of coffee without sugar. She did damage her liver by sleeping above a carbon monoxide leak. She did have botched back surgery which made her unable to exercise in any meaningful way. She did have her thyroid removed and now there is a growth on another gland. She's now a Type II unstabilized diabetic and you want to reduce the cause to SODA?

I have no objection to taxing soda like cigarettes. But I really don't care for your rationale.

While it would be nice to get fresh foods into "food deserts" in poor neighborhoods in the inner city, there's an element of choice there, too.

There is something besides simple poor food choices and lax morals at work in the obesity epidemic.

If it were that simple, few people would be fat. Who wants that kind of abuse?

'inner city' always gets lumped with 'poor choices and lax morals'. Know what I mean?

but those are the "food deserts" where only poor food choices are available, markets selling fresh produce having moved out of the area long ago and leaving only mini marts, liquor stores with snack food, and the occasional fast food joint to buy food.

The obesity epidemic is complicated, much more complicated than food moralists would have you think. The original premise in the OP was fatally flawed.

Drive through rural areas. Most people are fat nowadays in rural areas. The main cause, as I see it, is a sedentary lifestyle. Rural residents have to drive to get anywhere, when they cut grass they sit on a tractor, there is a lack of recreational facilities and gyms in rural areas, and people sit around in bars or at home watching television as entertainment. Plus, their diets largely suck.
In the past, poor people were the thinnest group of people. Today, they are largely the fattest group of people.

its not just the poor

and in terms of alcohol, well -- Americans today are gluttons far more than they are drunks, across the class spectrum. And gluttons are also a lot less social, a lot more boring, and a lot less witty than your aveage drunk. It was a sad day when America gave up whisky for Twinkies. We lost a lot of our character that day (as well as our good figures.)

both in terms of morbidity and mortality.

The premise of the OP was fatally flawed.

Test program being run by teacher's union health insurance in our area, a friend who was overweight by about 25-20 lb. and had high cholesterol got offered to be part of test program to try to combat obesity.

They offered a group to participate 1 year in test program that includes:
3 months free gym membership with personal trainer for minimum 3 hours week
once a week group sessions / discussions / nutritionist counseling
Evaluation of all blood work every 3 months
9 months reduced rate at gym $25/month with personal trainer minimum 1-1/2 hr week

My friend, age 63, lost 20 lb in first 3 months, reduced her cholesterol by 80 points (even her doctor was surprised), lowered her blood pressure (although she was not on HBP meds, it was staying in the slightly above normal range for past 2 years) and she says she feels better. Works out 3 times a week for 60-90 minutes, walks other days week, eats better, is more alert. She journals all her food and says she thinks she will continue this and knows it is a life style change.

So if insurance companies paid for this with a government single payer plan, it could work to change people rather than just hand out meds and it is needed for the economically disadvantaged people who have no chance at this type of eating education!

I'm learning to change just because of my friend!

I just spent 3 weeks in hell making sandwiches at Subway. I don't live in the inner city -- I live in a rural community. I was shocked and disgusted by the sheer gluttony.

People who are overweight by hundreds of pounds ordering footlong BLTs with double meat. The regular comes with 8 pieces of bacon. 16 pieces of bacon each, smothered in mayo, and on white bread. Enough to feed 4.

And I've seen many, many obese children coming in and getting footlongs sandwiches of extra meat, extra cheese, extra mayo, and no veggies. Or maybe pickles as veggies. And their parents just stand there and say nothing.

Yes, there are individuals who have underlying health problems that cause their obesity.

But the majority that I've seen are simply gluttons. It's sad, it's an illness...They are self-medicating with food. And it's rampant here in New England, and probably elsewhere.

LOSE WEIGHT, PEOPLE.

I've lost 40 pounds and I feel great!

Depending upon the reason and the severity, it can be highly "treatable" for lack of a better word.

Rather than just a soda tax, let's be honest. Let's set a scale of nutrition. Every food falls somewhere on that scale, from a dozen eggs to cake mix to spinach to frozen pizza. Foods dense in nutrition but low on fat and crap ingredients, no tax. As the food turns more and more to shit, the tax goes up. Want a Meat Supreme frozen pizza and some ice cream? Enjoy your tax. Interested in making a salad and tossing in some boneless, skinless chicken? Tax free. But hell, we do that, we're going to piss off the dairy industry, Monsanto, huge corporations with lots of lobby money, etc.

And really, the bottom line is...we just can't have that.

Pharmaceuticals
Hospitals
Tobacco
Alcohol
Guns
Food manufacturers
Restaurants

I agree with your notion of assessing taxes on fatty foods, sweet foods, and foods that contain generally unhealthy contents. The industries I have listed are ones that clearly add much to the health care toll, and are in the best position to curb causes and pass on costs to the consumers who end up requiring the most health care.

I think most people have no idea how much they really eat. If you are trying to keep track (as I am) it is all but impossible to find that information. There should be a law that requires restaurants to post calories and fat right on the menu under each item.

and the linemen aren't just big guys, they are morbidly obese. A 24 year-old kid who stands 6ft 1 and weighs 325 is being abused and exploited by the College he attended and by the NFL. It's a little creepy.

Eh, should watch the weight anyway.

:popcorn:

America is a country largely of overworked people with little or no paid vacation time, and little or no time or opportunity for healthy, fulfilling leisure. So shoving way too much food down your neck in a short period of time is about as much recreation as many have the time and opportunity for. The politicians aren't going to address the problem efficaciously, so they may as well STFU.

That's a new take on it, and entirely credible.

he doesn't elaborate that when you're poor, you have to go for the cheapest food possible, which is almost always shit, and pretty unhealthy. I have been in the position of being skint enough to have to wonder how I was going to afford food; I know of which I speak.

Is skint a regional dialect for broke? I have never heard that before.
:)