If current trends continue, all dogs will look like this in the future.
You need to put down those Hersheys® Chocolate Dunkers® (really? Pizza Hut), because the Ventura County Star just reported that health problems and lost productivity linked to overweight, obesity and inactivity cost the state of California $41.2B in 2006.
“I was astounded,” said Dr. Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization designed to draw public attention to critical health issues. He should be! We at PopEconomy! went back to the original study to locate their projections through 2011, then extrapolated those costs from CA to the entire USA using a per-capita calcuation for 2009. Results? Our fat asses are costing the economy $392,966,583,157 in lost productivity and health problems this year.
The study does not subscribe to the “fat but fit” mantra, I’ll tell you that. It specifically looked for higher prescription drug costs, higher rates of infection following wounds, sleep apnea, liver disease, diabetes, congestive heart failure…you name it. It’s pretty depressing. I’m a little less inclined to buy into the Lost Productivity Data: they argue that the average overweight person loses nearly 18hrs/yr from work and obese individual 54hrs (over 1 week!) from absences, short-term disability, and presentee-ism (being at work, but unable to perform your job due to…you know, being fat). Add in nearly another 58hrs/yr from those individuals who are physically inactive (performing less than 30 minutes of “moderate physical activity on most days”). Considering the CDC brands roughly half of all American tushes with either one or both labels (overweight/obese + physically inactive), it’s a wonder we get any work done at all! This study says we spend over 1 week just keeled over with our hands on our knees, clutching our hearts and catching our breath.
Unfortunately, with so little oxygen getting to our brains, both the article and study are short on solutions which I would call “innovative”. Likening a full-court government obesity intervention program to the sanitation movement of the early 1900’s, air pollution reduction of the 1960’s, and drunken driving reforms of the 1970’s, Dr. Goldstein is convinced we can do the same now. Suggestions in the article include better city planning (“making sure every city has safe and available places for physical activity…designed for walking and biking and not just for cars”), increasing the availability of places to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, taxing high-fat foods, and volunteering for childhood obesity prevention programs where kids learn about nutrition followed up by dodgeball sessions. One other thing: they say they’re going to need a lot of HealthCare Reform money to do it. (You just knew that was coming, didn’t you?)
Here’s where the CA Center for Public Health Advocacy really earns its stripes: it states that a 5% reduction in all risk factors would recoup an average of $2.4B in yearly health care and productivity costs. (Using our national figures for 2009, that works out to a $19.6B savings, by the way.) But how do we know that their fruit stands and bike lanes will get us there? And what would it cost? That’s the beauty part—they don’t know! When asked, the authors disappear quicker than elephant ears at the County Fair. So in the absence of knowing whether $1 would recoup $30, or $30 would save us but $1, I have no choice but to enter the entire cost of $393B into our PopEconomy! Ledger and admonish the nation to find its own way. If only there were slots for 298 million contestants on America’s Biggest Loser™…
