Severe obesity a billion dollar taxpayer issue
By Soumya Karlamangla, Los Angeles Times
We know obesity increases your risk of having high blood pressure, getting diabetes and being diagnosed with certain cancers. Now it turns out it can also increase costs for your state government.
A study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs found that medical care associated with severe obesity cost state-run health programs $8 billion in 2013. California’s program for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, took the biggest hit, spending $1.3 billion that year on severe obesity-related care.
Though the obesity epidemic in America has garnered a lot of attention, there hasn’t been enough focus on severe obesity, which has much bigger health risks and associated costs, said Michael Long, study author and assistant professor of prevention and community health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health atGeorge Washington University.
Get the damn government OUT of medical care, and it won’t cost the taxpayers a dime!
Fat slobs living off the money of others for self induced medical ills. Probably on food stamps to boot.
What a country?
Right, won’t cost me a dime….Private corporations totally have my best interest in mind. Dog…no words.
Let the pizza vendors decide if pizza is a vegetable in school lunches, what could possibly go wrong? The free market is infallible and will make sure the children have access to vegetables so long as they are served on bread with low quality cheese, sugary sauce and processed meats. And we will subsidize their industry.
Yaaaaay.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
Sam, before government stuck its nose into medicine, doctors were not corporations.
D’oh!
Go on believing big government actually has your best interests at heart. What could go wrong?
“Sam, before government stuck its nose into medicine, doctors were not corporations.
“Whhaaattt????
Get the damn private sector thieves OUT of healthcare! Our for profit based system is the laughing stock of the rest of industrialized world-we pay top dollar per capita for horrible medical outcomes-anyone that claims we have the ‘Best Healthcare in the World’ is only true if money is no object but otherwise they’re just delusional blowhards that hate gubmint-
healthcare should be a right for every American citizen, not a privilege