Obesity Reported to Cost U.S. $93B a Year reports some not-too-surprising news, but it gives some numbers:
Obesity is costing not only American lives, but dollars too. A study tallies that $93 billion per year goes to treat health problems of people who are overweight.About half that tab is picked up by the government through Medicare, which provides care to the elderly, and Medicaid, which serves the poor.
What does it say when your country’s poor are fat?
Altogether, medical spending attributable to extra weight totaled $78.5 billion in 1998, or $92.6 billion in 2002, inflation-adjusted dollars.The financial burden now rivals that attributable to smoking, the authors say, arguing that government and health insurance companies should offer incentives to help people lose weight.
In case $100 billion didn’t sound like a lot of money — and, ironically, it may not when we’re discussing the entire US — the article points out that obesity is costing as much as smoking. That’s a lot of money. And, naturally, once you start paying for other people’s bad choices with tax dollars, the government has to get involved in curbing those bad choices.