Financial burden of obesity in the US

Financial burden of obesity in the US

Introduction

Obesity is becoming an increasing health concern worldwide and in developing as well as industrialized nations. Obesity is associated with increased risk for many serious health conditions as well as reduced quality of life, discrimination, and social stigma, resulting not only in shorter life span, fewer years of healthy life, and lower quality of life for the obese individual but also increased burden on the healthcare system. For instance, in the United States in 2006, it was estimated that medical costs for obese individuals were $1,429 higher (per person) than for normal-weight individuals and that overall medical costs associated with obesity were $147 billion. For the years 1987-2001, one study found that more than a quarter (27 percent) of increases in medical costs were associated with diseases related to obesity (Cawley, 2007).

Diagnosis of obesity is mainly based on the values of the weight according to height of the individuals. This can be easily measured and calculated as the body mass index (BMI), an equation that compares weight and height, dividing weight (in kilograms) by height (in meters). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), people are defined as overweight (pre-obese) when their BMI is between 25 kg/m2 and 30 kg/m2 and obese when their BMI is greater than 30 kg/m2. Additionally, obesity has been classified in three levels or classes: class I obesity includes those with a BMI between 30.0 and 34.9 kg/m2; class II obesity, 35.0 to 39.9 kg/m2; and class III obesity, 40.0 kg/m2.

Discussion

In many countries, malnutrition problems represent a double burden of disease. Although in the past, nutritional deficits were the most important of them, today overweight and obesity have become highly relevant, not only in adults but also in children, and not just in developed countries but also in many developing countries, where, it has been stated, the increase is often faster than in the developed nations. This worldwide problem has increased in frequency, particularly in the last three decades. Globally, there are more than 1 billion overweight adults, with at least 300 million of them being obese. This complex condition implies serious social and psychological dimensions, affecting virtually all ages and socioeconomic groups. Recently, it has been considered that, given the current prevalence of overweight and obese children, in the future, the extent of such pandemic will be even higher than today (Cawley, 2012).

Although often not calculated, the economical burden of obesity will impose large primary healthcare costs and investments derived from related morbidity medical care. Different studies have found that the increase in obesity prevalence has led to even a threefold rise in hospital costs. In 2001, Canada's economic burden in terms of overweight and obesity was estimated at $4.3 billion ($1.6 billion in direct costs and $2.7 billion in indirect costs). In the United States, medical expenses accounted for 9.1 percent of total U.S. medical expenditures in 1998 and may have reached as high as $92.6 ...