The cost of obesity is rising every day – including $147 billion last year and 100,000 deaths.
Obesity is the elephant in the room of health care reform, a public health catastrophe that kills more than 100,000 Americans a year, cost the nation $147 billion last year and threatens to shorten U.S. life expectancy for the first time since the Civil War. Whatever Washington does this year to reduce medical spending seems likely to be swamped by the nation’s rising weight. Obesity lurks behind the top chronic illnesses – heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and colon, breast and prostate cancers, among many others – whose treatments routinely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of every three Americans, and one of every four Californians, is obese and rates are rising at an alarming pace, particularly among children, experts say. – From San Francisco Chronicle