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Political Insider

The link between obesity and the federal deficit

4:52 pm February 22, 2010, by jgalloway

Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University will be in D.C. tomorrow to draw the link between obesity and the federal deficit.

You pack on the pounds, you grow old, and you send Medicare costs skyrocketing. Your grandchildren pick up the tab.

Twenty years ago, heart disease was driving growth in Medicare costs. Now it’s rotundity.

“You see it in the Medicare population just as you see it in the general population,” Thorpe said. “The prevalence of obesity among senior citizens has doubled. Virtually all the increase in diabetes — that’s all due to obesity.”

Thorpe is executive director of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. He’s got a good blog going on the health care overhaul.

At the National Press Club on Tuesday morning, he’ll make two points: First, that Medicare costs can be partially controlled by paying more attention to the “blocking and tackling” aspects of treating chronic problems like diabetes, high blood pressure and such.

It must be done early, targeting 50-year-olds. Waiting until a patient is old enough to actually use Medicare is too late.

But obesity is the factor that’s making all this blocking and tackling necessary. This is a summary from a November study by Thorpe on the topic:

–Obesity is growing faster than any previous public health issue our nation has faced. If current trends continue, 103 million American adults will be considered obese by 2018. [In Georgia, that's 41 percent.]

– The U.S. is expected to spend $344 billion on health care costs attributable to obesity in 2018 if rates continue to increase at their current levels. Obesity‐related direct expenditures are expected to account for more than 21 percent of the nation’s direct health care spending in 2018.

– If obesity levels were held at their current rates, the U.S. could save an estimated $820 per adult in health care costs by 2018 ‐ a savings of almost $200 billion dollars

The same study says that a tax on sugary soft drinks might be worth looking at. A brave suggestion at a university fueled by Coke.

But the real message is clear: if you consider yourself a true deficit hawk, you’ll put down that Twinkie.

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12 comments Add your comment

Ab Fab

February 22nd, 2010
10:26 pm

Plenty of dumb people hold higher education degrees. So, Thorpe’s education credentials and relationship with a teaching hospital are of no value to me. I’m waiting for one of these educated idiots to have the guts to tell the truth. Obesity isn’t an epidemic; it is a result.

When you put cheap junk food in school lunch programs . . .
When you serve sugary drinks (and not water) in school . . .
When you cut out recess . . .
When you cut out physical education in schools . . .
When you eliminate after-school programs . . .
When you don’t maintain safe places for kids to play . . .
When you don’t invest in public transportation so that people have to drive everywhere . . .
When, in the name of profits, companies can make salaried employees work 60+ hours per week . . .
When “efficiency experts” analyze employee performance like people are robots who cannot take a break from their work space to stretch and re-focus . . .
When people have to work 2 and 3 jobs to make ends meet and have no time for exercise . . .
When junk food is cheap and nutritious food is too expensive for many families . . .

Obesity is the RESULT.

An epidemic just kind of happens; you don’t really have to have done or not done something to experience and epidemic. But the truth is that our fiscal, educational, labor and economic policies are the cause of the obesity effect. We are only reaping what others have sown.

And Thorpe? Just another corporatist shill, in my opinion. I’d bet a dollar to a doughnut he’s being paid by the insurance companies to make this presentation.

shirley

February 22nd, 2010
10:44 pm

OK. Time to start working out again.

Man With No Country

February 22nd, 2010
11:06 pm

So everyone is fat because of the government? Most fat people are that way because of the choices they have made. I’m getting overweight because I’ve been sitting on my a$$. But I won’t blame it on the government.

Rational Citizen

February 22nd, 2010
11:41 pm

We as a nation are eating ourselves into bankruptcy. Last year, 34% of Americans were obese, according to the CDC. Our elected officials have decided that it’s illegal for someone to smoke a joint, snort cocaine or shoot heroin into their veins, but it’s perfectly legal for someone to eat themselves into the need for a motorized cart. We have to seriously consider the means by which we discourage the decisions that lead to this epidemic. Living in Atlanta I understand that it’s a touchy subject, but taxing food like sugary drinks and high-salt, high-fat foods must be one prong to our approach.

We also need someone in Washington to finally stand up and advocate for a reform of the Farm Bill. We are subsidizing obesity in this nation by making the worst foods the cheapest and the healthiest the most cost-prohibitive. By subsidizing corn, which is turned into high fructose corn syrup and injected into every processed food we eat, we force those who have to stretch every dollar into feeding their families the worst possible foods.

David S

February 23rd, 2010
12:02 am

Let’s also not forget the unbelievable subsidies for corn growers and tarrifs on sugar. The result has been of course waste of government money, removal of sugar from products and the substitution of diabetes causing corn sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup.

Whenever the government rather than the market runs the economy, you have failure and suffering. Isn’t it time to rethink what we want government to do?

Rick Cole

February 23rd, 2010
5:01 am

We obviously don’t know what we are doing. We need the Federal Government to save us by controlling what we eat, our healthcare, our incomes, everything. They are such good people and so competent and effective. Americans are fools if they don’t give them increased control.

jt

February 23rd, 2010
6:09 am

We are from the government and we are here to help. More taxes will cure it all.

HoyaLawya

February 23rd, 2010
10:41 am

Except that obesity shortens lifespans, so unless that is also taken into account to offset the supposed increases, all of these numbers are completely bogus. Maybe if you are a true deficit hawk you should eat yourself into an early grave.

Randyt (aka Been there, Done that, Got a Closet FULL of t-shirts)

February 23rd, 2010
11:38 am

So does this mean that like the government, we are consuming more than we can afford, thus causing personal deficit spending? Easy credit = fat stomachs. Seems a little “heavy” for an early morning conversation.

Bob

February 23rd, 2010
2:47 pm

This is why people should have to pay thier own medical costs. If I want to be fat no one should be allowed to tell me I can’t. If I can afford the additional costs that go along with it.

I just don’t see why, as someone who cares about my weight and health, I have to pay for people who hate their bodies and try to destroy themselves with food. Why is it my responsibility? Shouldn’t they pay for their own irresponsibility?

William in Lithonia

February 23rd, 2010
9:48 pm

Look at what has worked in the past, we dont have to reinvent the wheel, we just have to do what has worked.

America had the biggest middle class when tarrifs (taxes on imported goods) protected American Jobs – and the top corporate tax rate was 90 percent in the 40’s and 50’s, and 70 percent in the 60’s and 70’s… until the Reagan Revolution.

America was the largest exporter of finished goods, and the largest creditor nation, until the Reagan Revolution. Then we became the largest importer of finished goods (also aided by Bill Clinton and NAFTA), and the largest debtor nation (also aided by George W. Bush).

America’s standard of living HAS GONE DOWN since cutting tarrifs on imported goods and cutting the top tax rate.

Other Civilized countries do have higher personal and corporate tax rates, but they also have a higher standard of living with higher wages (negating the tax increase) universal health care and government paid college.

College was nearly free in California, before Ronald Reagan became governor, btw.

Cutting the top tax rate did not trickle down jobs and higher wages on us peons. Infact just the opposite. Before the Reagan Tax cuts the top 2 percent rather than paying taxes, would reinvest their money in plants and equipment and higher wages in America. That would generate tax revenue as well as jobs. Jobs did trickle down when tarrifs and tax rates were higher.

Tarrifs were also high enough so they couldn’t just take their jobs to Communist China either, like so many ‘communist haters’ do today.

Now, the top 2 percent take the money they have because of the tax cuts and buy US Treasury Bonds. They buy the US debt that was created with the tax cuts.

Now we have to pay them interest on that debt too! Rather than creating jobs with those tax cuts they make us dig our grave deeper.

The top 2 percent also use their tax cut billions to inflate the stock market until it pops and takes all our 401k’s down with it. The top 2 percent know how to profit in the bubbles and the crashes leaving the middle class in ashes.

They do not create jobs with their tax cuts, they are the first to cut jobs when things go sour. They are the first to move jobs overseas when they can evade our standard of living such as environmental laws, tax laws, and wage laws. They have no alliegence to this country.

Money in the working people’s pockets create jobs. 2/3rds of our GDP is consumer spending. The other 1/3rd is spent by business when their businesses have customers. Money in the pockets of the wealthy don’t even provide for their worker’s health care as our Reagan Revolution has shown us.

The Reagan Revolution, combined with the Religious Right, has made us the Worlds’ Largest Per Capita Prison population as we continue to spend 90 Billion a year on the insane war on drugs. (That’s as much money as we spent each year on the Iraq War.) 50 percent of most large cities local taxes go to police and prisons neglecting education and a reasonable drug policy.

The money alone given in bonuses to the employees of the banks we bailed out could cover the cost of the states debt in all 50 States.

The linke between Fat Cats and the Federal Deficit: TAX CUTS
(TARRIFS ARE TAXES TOO!)

Bob

February 24th, 2010
3:17 pm

William,

You must be an unemployed communist if you actually believe most of that crap you wrote. It was honestly too long to finish reading.

People that want higher taxes blow my mind. Why do you want someone to spend your money for you? Who knows how to spend it better than yourself?