Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of Health Economics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese.”
Making the cost impact all the more troubling is the fact that, unlike smokers, obese people tend to live almost as long as those who keep their weight under control. "Smokers die early enough that they save Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare" trillions of dollars", said Duke's Eric Finkelstein. "But mortality isn't that much higher among the obese."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/30/obesity-now...
Forbes:
Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of Health Economics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese.”
Making the cost impact all the more troubling is the fact that, unlike smokers, obese people tend to live almost as long as those who keep their weight under control. "Smokers die early enough that they save Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare" trillions of dollars", said Duke's Eric Finkelstein. "But mortality isn't that much higher among the obese."
---
So in other words we're looking and year over year cost increases that are significant. A BMI of 30–35 kg/m2 reduces life expectancy by two to four years [wikipedia].
Two to four years is nothing especially when you have all these extra yearly costs to make up. Yes, the very obese can lose 6-10 years of life, but they're rare. 30-35 is the common range. Not to mention advances in stent technology and advances in heart drugs means that a obese person today is going to have a very good chance at a long lifespan. We may be able to eliminate that 2-4 shortage sooner than later.
Medicare is a public insurance scheme in the US, not private.
> None of your other cites calculate anything have to do with obesity costs in healthcare.
So you're dismissing one study ("Does Preventing Obesity Lead to Reduced Health-Care Costs?") because it uses data from the UK and ignoring the other completely ("Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure") why? Both are expressly about calculating costs in healthcare.
You aren't even arguing against their methodology or conclusions, just dismissing their mere existence.
> I'm sorry but you sound like a typical fat acceptance advocate trying to skirt the issue.
Bring up facts backed by studies is "skirting the issue?" What exactly does addressing the issue head on look like?
I am following the science where it leads. You can paint that as an ideology but I'd suggest dismissing studies you don't like the conclusion of is more ideological than presenting them as is. The key difference is that my views can be changed with more data, seems like your views have already been made up prior to today and you'll dismiss counter-evidence at a hand wave.
Not to mention the false claim you make compared obese people to smokers. Smokers do die young, obese do not. Again, a 2 year lifespace difference is not a cost savings when you're looking at several thousands per year extra healthcare spending for an obese person.
I'm sorry but your biased fat acceptance "facts" are false. I wish you would own up them, accept the data in the forbes article instead of attacking me in this passive aggressive fashion.
For the population at large, MOST health care costs are accumulated at 60+, see this graph[0]. In fact ages 1-50, on average, cost almost as much as 65-75. And worse still from retirement people pay a lot less tax.
Why is this relevant? Smokers and the Obese often die after their working (and taxpaying) life but before their expensive retirement. This means that while their last few years might be more expensive, their costs over the course of their life may be half that of someone that lived until 85.
The ironic thing is that obesity/smoking might save social security from insolvency and be a massive saving for Medicare (as the Obese/Smokers won't ever enter Medicare, but will pay tons into it). Single payer would likely include the current Medicare ages, thus it would still remain cheaper to cover an Obese/Smoker who dies at 60 than a completely healthy person that dies at 80.
The reality is that people hate the Obese/Smokers due to biases, not costs. Or because they think it is immoral/a character flaw to allow oneself to die early. There's no actual economic argument to be made that Obesity/Smoking is bad for society, they're net contributors by every major metric (particularly healthcare, retirement contributions, and taxes).
There's been multiple studies drawing the same conclusion[1][2][3]. But most won't look at the data, and ignore the "long tail" of healthy individuals that is so expensive while talking about the "short tail" expense of the obese or smokers.
[0] http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danmunro/files/2014/04/hccost...
[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
[2] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710093371506#t=a...
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2225433/