Growing Waistline = Fiscal Threat
A failure to address the obesity epidemic would “explode the federal budget”
Wary of tackling Social Security or Medicare reform, members of Congress are pitching a new prescription for the nation’s coming fiscal woes: fresh fruit and exercise. Healthy diets won’t pay the trillions of dollars in unaffordable health benefits promises. Politicians and policy advocates are arguing that heavier Americans — not just older Americans — pose an urgent fiscal threat. A doubling of obesity rates among the Medicare population has been a big force behind the program’s spiraling cost, concluded a 2006 study by Emory University health economists. Emory’s Kenneth Thorpe and David Howard found that spending on obese patients accounted for 25% of total Medicare spending in 2002, up from 9.4% in 1987.
Growing waistlines also hold implications for Social Security. While there is speculation that obesity might slow or stop longevity gains, experts are much more sure of its link to disability. Higher disability rates are a double negative, driving up Social Security costs while shrinking the potential payroll-tax base.
