InsuranceThought — Blogs About Insurance

The obesity rates of adults have doubled in the last three decades and tripled for children; obviously, weight has become a “huge” issue, one we can no longer ignore. Two-thirds of adults and more than 23 million children in the United States are overweight, obese, or morbidly obese, costing our country billions – yes, BILLIONS, with a  “b” – in preventable healthcare costs as well as lost productivity.

But obesity in and of itself is not really the problem as far as healthcare and insurance is concerned, it’s the health issues that follow – diseases related to obesity such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Healthcare reform has focused mostly on access to care, and, increasingly, on quality as well; those are the issues that are central to improving the overall health of Americans. Unfortunately, we have gone far too long without preventing individuals from getting sick in the first place. Obesity is not a new problem, but something we’ve watched become “epidemic” according to the CDC.

Obesity is close to overtaking smoking as the greatest single cause of preventable death in the U.S. It is already the biggest factor in the rising healthcare costs that have been central to the reform debate. With eighty percent of obese children growing into obese adults, the potential exponential growth of the problem is obvious.

President Obama created a task force to come up with action plans to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation. He essentially set out to accomplish four main objectives: Access to healthy, affordable food; an increase in the physical activities schools and communities offer; healthier food in schools; and giving parents information and tools that will help them make healthy food choices for their families and themselves.

The hope, I’m sure, is to use money in the area of prevention to alleviate its use after the damage has been done and care has become necessary. There is, after all, a direct relationship between poverty and obesity, therefore, Medicare and Medicaid already foot a great deal of the bill for costs related to obesity. The old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” still holds true – using healthcare reform dollars to prevent obesity, makes a lot more sense than paying all the costs associated with the illnesses that develop as a result.