Study: Medical spending on obesity doubled in past decade

A new study published on the Web site for the journal Health Affairs has found that the medical costs for an obese person in the United States is, on average, $1,429 more that the costs for a person of normal weight, a difference of nearly 42 percent (Source: “Medical spending on obesity in the U.S. doubled in last 10 years, study finds,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 27, 2009).

According to the study, Annual Medical Spending Attributable To Obesity: Payer- And Service-Specific, the estimated overall medical spending on conditions associated with obesity has nearly doubled in the past decade in the United States to an estimated $147 billion a year.  Nearly 90 percent of that increase was because of the rise in U.S. obesity rates, lead researcher Eric Finkelstein said. More than 25 percent of Americans are obese, up from 18.3 percent in 1998.

Obesity was also the focus of the Ohio Hospital Association’s monthly newsletter HealthBeat.

“Obesity costs Ohioans $3.3 billion in health care costs on an annual basis,” the OHA newsletter stated. “Half of obesity-related medical expenditures are financed by taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid. Ohio spends $289 per person per year on medical costs related to obesity, the 11th highest in the nation. And this number continues to grow as poor lifestyle habits are passed to the next generation.”

According to state-level data from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, about 28 percent of Ohio residents — or 3 million people — are estimated to be obese, a number that exceeds the national average.