Obesity Medical Expenses Cost Billions Each Year

Obesity not only takes a toll on your health but your wallet as well, as it costs $147 billion each year in direct medical costs and nearly 10 percent of all medical spending in the U.S.

Roughly one in three Americans are considered obese. An obese person could spend as much as $4,870 per year on health care expenses on Medicare, which is about 41 percent more than a normal weight person spends at $3,400.

Prescription drugs are the majority of medical expenses and can cost an obese person upwards of $1,300 a year, which is 80 percent more than the $700 an average weight person spends.

“…the clear link between rising rates of obesity and increasing medical costs is alarming, but not unexpected,” …the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said in a statement. “Obesity is the driver of so many chronic conditions — heart disease, diabetes, cancer — that generate the exorbitant costs that are crushing our health-care system,” she said.

“The only way to show real savings in health expenditures in the future is through efforts to reduce the prevalence of obesity and related health conditions,” study author [and] director, RTI Public Health Economics Program, said.

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