Obesity cost mounts in US

While the biggest consequence is still on an individual’s well-being, “there are some significant economic costs associated with obesity,” said Ross Hammond, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. — Reuters/file

WASHINGTON: Obesity is weighing heavily on the US economy.

As a panel of scientists considers ways to help Americans trim down, unpublished research shows medical expenses linked to being extremely overweight have skyrocketed. Experts say the damage is augmented by reduced productivity, wider gender and income inequality and even higher transportation costs.

While the biggest consequence is still on an individual’s well-being, “there are some significant economic costs associated with obesity,” said Ross Hammond, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Unfortunately, it’s not an outcome that’s rare anymore.”

Some 35.7 per cent of Americans 20 to 74 years old were obese in the period from 2009 to 2012, according to the latest figures from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. That’s up from 31.1pc a decade earlier and 13.3pc in 1960-1962. The CDC considers adults obese when their body mass index, which takes into account weight and height, is 30 or higher.

As a result, there is growing urgency to come up with plans to check the trend. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, the panel of scientists that counsels government agencies, last month recommended that sugary drinks and foods be taxed to reduce their consumption. The report, released Feb 19, went on to advise that the revenue generated could be used to promote healthier behaviour or subsidise the cost of fruits and vegetables.

“This really is a situation that’s beyond business as usual,” said Walter Willett, a professor and chairman of the department of nutrition at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

“We have to think about serious interventions that go beyond the norm.”

Unaddressed, the costs could continue to mount, with health-care expenses being the most direct economic consequence.

Widespread obesity raised medical-care costs by $315.8 billion in 2010, according to John Cawley, an economics professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. That amounted to about $3,508 a year for each obese person, the latest available data showed. The expenses, which include doctors’ appointments, hospital stays, prescription drugs and home health care, were up 48pc from 2005’s $213bn after adjusting for inflation, the researchers found.

The findings, to be published later this year in the journal PharmacoEconomics, represent the combined work of fellow researchers Chad Meyerhoefer, Adam Biener, Mette Hammer and Neil Wintfeld.

Chronic illnesses linked to obesity, such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as stroke and cancer, are expensive to treat, Cawley said. Moreover, the costs are usually paid by private and public health insurance, meaning that leaner people are subsidising those with less healthy diets, he said. “All of us are paying these costs.”

While such spending doesn’t directly reduce economic growth, it does represent a shift in priorities toward health care and away from things such as business investment in other industries that could boost output down the road.

Obesity also poses problems in less direct ways. Excessive fat is correlated with an increase in absenteeism from work because of health issues, said Tatiana Andreyeva, director of economic initiatives at the Rudd Centre for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut in Hartford.

That costs the nation about $8.65bn a year, Andreyeva found with fellow researchers Joerg Luedicke and Y. Claire Wang. Obese employees miss an extra 1.1 to 1.7 days of work a year compared to their normal-weight counterparts.

“The employee is most likely getting paid for it, but there was no work done on it, and there was a cost to the employer,” Andreyeva said. Diminished productivity is a major source of drag on the economy as it leads to higher production costs and a less competitive workforce, she said.

By arrangement with Washington Post-Bloomberg News Service

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2015