Spending to treat obesity's health effects will quadruple in next decade

Medill News Service/McClatchy: "Spending to treat the health effects of obesity, $86 billion last year, will quadruple over the next decade, and almost half of U.S. adults will be obese by 2018, according to the annual America's Health Rankings study. Doctors who participated in the study warned that if the trends continue and obesity rates keep rising, spending on the health effects of obesity — defined as being 20 percent or more above an individual's recommended weight — will grow to $344 billion by 2018. ... If obesity rates held at current levels, on the other hand, the U.S. would save nearly $200 billion in health care costs, the data show" (Claytor, 11/19).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.