On the one hand, obesity is associated with many other ailments such as heart disease, diabetes, etc. that cost the system a lot of money.
On the other hand, well, longer life spans impacting Social Security, Medicare, etc.
Savings on the order of $100bn per year [1].
> longer life spans impacting Social Security, Medicare, etc.
An obese person dying early may well wind up costing the system more than a healthy person dying old. (Most medical costs are incurred terminally. The obese have more-complicated terminal paths.)
[1] https://healthpolicy.usc.edu/research/benefits-of-medicare-c...
Humanity’s GDP is around $100 trillion per year. There is plenty of money for healthcare with many orders of magnitude to spare for other endeavors.
Bean counting here feels like Google in the early ‘00s proposing to make office supply expense reduction a business priority.
Putting infinite value on anything is a great way to incentivise a system that delivers little to none of it.
No it's not. Every doctor triages. And every medical system has internal cost limits, whether implicit or implict, universal or variable, past which it will not treat. Sometimes that's enforced by gatekeeping entire categories of treatments; in other cases we have patients individually reviewed, e.g. for organ transplants.
If managing obesity is less expensive than treating it, there is a legitimate question around how the cost of that treatment should be split between the public and the individual. (Whether that cost be an explicit split or gatekeeping the treatment to only the most morbidly obese.) Thankfully, that's not the case--treating obesity, even chronically with super-expensive drugs, is still cheaper than the status quo.
Yes, every medical system does this. (It's almost the defining difference between medicine and healthcare.)
America does it individually (and inefficiently). Europea by restricting access to expensive treatments. If you don't do this at some level, you'll wind up with edge cases constantly running up bills the economy can't pay for and a collapse of the healthcare system's solvency.
It would be interesting to see this information, but would not be useful to act on. If the answer was "it costs more to keep more people alive" (hint: it does, that is why we let so many die of preventable illness), should we keep less people alive and healthy? The pursuit of economic growth at all costs is a disease far more dangerous than anything you would treat in a hospital.
but i think if you think it thru, 1 should dominate 2, and 2 should be reduced as well.
If somebody wants to live an obese lifestyle, I really think that’s up to them. But I’d be much happier about it if it didn’t cost me so much money.
Your perspective is frankly disgusting. I hope you don't have any vices. The point of a society is to pool resources together to improve the collective. Different people in different positions of power and ability have different needs. Hopefully you don't personally have any power to exclude people from that group. I hope that the powers that be don't decide that you deserve less for some reason.
Based on what? The reward pathways are remarkably similar. And unlike heroin, you can't go cold turkey on eating.
The bigger difference though is that we all eat food, and for most of us includes at least some absolutely delicious food that would be incredibly unhealthy to eat in large quantities. We’re all (more or less) exposed to the “addictive substance”, it’s just some people have the ability to deprive ourselves constantly indulging that impulse, while others don’t. We don’t however, need to take small doses of heroin every day to survive.
What gives you the confidence to overrule medical professionals on this? (Note: I am not a doctor and have zero medical training.)
> We’re all (more or less) exposed to the “addictive substance”, it’s just some people have the ability to deprive ourselves constantly indulging that impulse, while others don’t
One, I’d challenge we’re all similarly exposed. I grew up in a house with no sugary sodas and plenty of leafy greens with each meal. Many people did not.
Two, we know from drug addiction that there is no global measure of addictiveness. Some people can smoke a cigarette or cigar or two, on average, per year. Others get hooked after their first draw. There is no reason to suspect something similar isn’t happening with obesity.
By this criteria, I’m sure you’ll be able to find at least one eating glass addict somewhere in the world. But if we can stretch the definition to include glass as an addictive substance, then it kinda stops meaning anything at all.
And when I say these innovative addiction diagnoses are controversial, I mean within the community of clinical experts, which they are.
You're assuming everyone who tries heroin becomes an addict. At first glance it looks like "approximately 1 to 12 months after heroin onset, an estimated 23% to 38% of new heroin users have become dependent on heroin" [1]. By coincidence, that seems to mirror American obesity prevalence [2]. (Obviously heroin is more addictive than food. Don't do heroin.)
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/php/data-research/adult-obesity-...
Your opinion is that of a petulant child. Many years of research has shown that obesity is not this simple. Many chemical processes take place that influence one's ability to make better health choices, and many external factors put constraints on those choices as well. This is the exact same thing as hard drugs. Being obese is not a moral failing. When you say things like this, you show your true colors. You are not extending humanity to obese people, and it is very obvious.
I sincerely hope you reconsider your opinions. I hope you don't have any obese people in your life, or at least hope they don't read these messages. I think they would be disappointed to hear what you think of them.
And again, I hope you don't have any vices and are the perfect model of health, otherwise this would be a quite silly opinion to have.
EDIT:
I've been rated limited on comments so I'll post my last response here instead:
I have nothing further to say to this other than that you should consider talking to someone about your clearly deep-seated hatred for those who don't fit your model of participant in society; it doesn't seem healthy. Find an obese friend and show them your comments and watch their face as they read them. I wonder if you will find the humanity in their response that you are lacking here.
The fact that an obese person is harming other people as well as themselves might be an uncomfortable truth for them to hear. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.
Granted. But why does it need to be said?
I'm a skiier. That lifestyle choice alone probably has a higher risk-adjusted cost to our healthcare system than if I were fat. I'd still miffed if prior to setting a bone my doctor decided to lecture me on the risks of skiing. I'd be positively furious if I got that from my health insurer.
> fact that an obese person is harming other people as well as themselves might be an uncomfortable truth for them to hear
Why do they need to hear it? There isn't a need. What they need is to not be obese anymore. That's treatment. My point is skipping the lecture and going straight to treatment is how we solve most medical problems.
Source?