The Economics of Overweight and Obesity
Obesity has become a crucial health problem for our nation, and these findings show that the medical costs alone reflect the significance of the challenge. Of course, the ultimate cost to Americans is measured in chronic disease and early death. We must take responsibility both as individuals and working together to reduce the health toll associated with obesity.—Tommy G. Thompson, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, commenting on estimates that U.S. obesity-attributable medical expenditures reached $75 billion in 2003 and that taxpayers finance about half of these costs through Medicare and Medicaid, in a press release from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, January 21, 2004
The economic impact of obesity is considerable. The World Bank estimated the cost of obesity in the United States as 12 percent of the national health-care budget in the late 1990s. The increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States has resulted in a corresponding increase in direct and indirect health-care costs. Direct health-care costs are those incurred for preventive measures, diagnostic, and treatment services. Examples of direct health-care costs are physician office visits, hospital and nursing home charges, prescription drug costs, and special hospital beds to accommodate obese patients.
This page contains 201 words.
The Economics of Overweight and Obesity article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 7,194 words
(approx. 24 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Body mass index Article
