Medicare Blog

how much medicare and medical is spent with health issues and obesity

by Amely Greenholt DVM Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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The majority of the spending is generated from treating obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, among others. Obesity is responsible for $61.8 billion in Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Full Answer

How much does Medicare spend on obesity-related conditions?

Spending on obesity-related conditions accounted for an estimated 8.5 percent of Medicare spending, 11.8 percent of Medicaid spending, and 12.9 percent of private-payer spending.

How much does obesity cost in health care?

( 7) Cawley and Meyerhoefer, meanwhile, found that per capita medical spending was $2,741 higher for obese individuals than for individuals who were not obese-a 150 percent increase. ( 1) Thompson and colleagues concluded that, over the course of a lifetime, per-person costs for obesity were similar to those for smoking.

How much does the federal government spend on Medicare and Medicaid?

In 1990, the federal government spent about $107.9 billion on Medicare (about 8.8 percent of total expenditures) and $43.3 billion on Medicaid (about 3.5 percent of expenditures). By 2000, those numbers doubled.

Why are health care costs different for the obese and non-obese?

The challenge is that obesity is not randomly distributed in society; as a result, the health care costs of the obese and non-obese may differ for reasons other than weight, such as differences in access to health care, income, or other dimensions of health.

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How much in medical costs per year does obesity account for in the United States?

Obesity Epidemic Accounts For More Than $170 Billion In Surplus Medical Costs Per Year In The United States: Study. Is It Better To Lease Or Buy A Car In Summer 2022?

How is healthcare affected by obesity?

The increased prevalence of obesity has been associated with increases in cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, degenerative joint disease requiring joint replacement, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, cognitive dysfunction and others.

How much does obesity cost the healthcare system Australia?

The report indicated the financial burden of obesity in Australia is estimated to be $11.8 billion. Those figures consist of $5.4 billion in direct health costs and $6.4 billion in indirect costs.

What are the direct costs of obesity?

According to a report by the Milken Institute, in 2016, obesity/overweight and its associated chronic diseases were estimated to account for more than $480 billion in direct healthcare costs and $1.24 trillion in indirect work loss costs in the US.

Why does obesity increase healthcare costs?

Obesity can lead to Type 2 diabetes, chronic heart disease, hypertension, and many other syndromes and diseases that are covered by Medicaid and Medicare. As obesity has increased, so has the incidence of these diseases, thereby increasing the cost of healthcare.

How does obesity impact healthcare utilization and spending among the elderly in the United States?

Results: Among the 9,484 survey respondents, 22.9% were obese. Those categorized as obese were significantly more likely to incur inpatient admissions and orthopedic procedures. Annualized health care expenditures were US$1,496 higher for obese compared with normal weight.

What is the obesity rate in Australia 2020?

Two-thirds of Australian adults are now overweight (35.6%) or obese (31.3%). Higher rates of men are overweight compared to women, while similar proportions of men and women are obese. The prevalence of overweight and obesity is rising in Australian adults, driven mainly by increased rates of obesity.

How does obesity affect the economy in Australia?

The impact on the economy is large: overweight accounts for 8.6% of health expenditure; and lowers labour market outputs by the equivalent of 371 thousand full-time workers per year. Combined, this means that overweight reduces Australia's GDP by 3.1%.

How does obesity effect the economy?

Besides excess health care expenditure, obesity also imposes costs in the form of lost productivity and foregone economic growth as a result of lost work days, lower productivity at work, mortality and permanent disability.

What percentage of the national medical budget is due to obesity?

The estimated annual health care costs of obesity-related illness are a staggering $190.2 billion or nearly 21% of annual medical spending in the United States.

Who pays for the cost of obesity?

These costs are paid by individuals and their households, employers, government, and society. The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population has increased steadily since the 1960s—from 3.4 percent of adults in 1962 to 39.8 percent in 2016, the year of the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Society and culture

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Direct and Indirect Costs of Obesity One widely-quoted estimate from Finkelstein and colleagues, based on data from the U.S. Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), found that obesity was responsible for about 6 percent of medical costs in 1998, or about $42 billion (in 2008 dollars). (7) By 2006, obesity was responsible f…
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Cost

  • Two types of costs are associated with the treatment of obesity and obesity-related conditions: Direct costs are those that result from outpatient and inpatient health services (including surgery), laboratory and radiological tests, and drug therapy. Indirect costs are harder to identify and measure than direct costs. Several investigators have evaluated the cost of obesity on an individ…
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Categories

  • Indirect costs, which have been defined as resources forgone as a result of a health condition,(2) fall into various categories:
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Health

  • MEPS is a bit of an underestimate of health care costs, since it doesnt include people who live in institutions and, in turn, may be in poorer health than the general population. So when Finkelstein and colleagues looked at the gold-standard source of health care spending data in the U.S. (the National Health Expenditure Accounts dataset), they calculated that obesity may have been resp…
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Prevention

  • It is possible that a clearer understanding of the cost of obesity will spur larger and more urgent programs to prevent and treat it. While the U.S. has made some investments in prevention, with the First Ladys Lets Move initiative and Communities Putting Prevention to Work, these efforts represent relatively small steps forward, and future public health prevention funding remain und…
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Other sources

  • 4. Trogdon JG, Finkelstein EA, Hylands T, Dellea PS, Kamal-Bahl SJ. Indirect costs of obesity: a review of the current literature. Obes Rev. 2008; 9:489-500.
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Selected publications

  • 5. Colditz GW, Wang, YC. Economic costs of obesity. In: Hu F, Obesity Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2008. 6. Dor AF, Langwith C, Tan E. A heavy burden: The individual costs of being overweight and obese in the United States. The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services Department of Health Policy, 2010. 9. Withrow D, Al…
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Literature

  • 7. Finkelstein EA, Trogdon JG, Cohen JW, Dietz W. Annual medical spending attributable to obesity: payer- and service-specific estimates. Health Aff (Millwood). 2009; 28:w822-31. 8. Wang CY, McPherson K, Marsh T, Gortmaker S, Brown M. Health and economic burden of the projected obesity trends in the USA and the UK. Lancet. 2011; 378:815-25.
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