Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Indicator is 42%
We all know America is getting more obese, and Ezra Klein had a post yesterday pointing out that while cigarettes kill, obesity often doesn’t kill –but causes disability, chronic disease, and expenses that are 42% higher than the nonobese.
So – we could save a lot if obese people would lose a lot of weight.
However, moving from this conclusion to practical steps to skinny down the population isn’t easy. It’s a challenge to figure out how to get people to lose weight.
June’s Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has a careful study from the Netherlands where construction workers at high risk for heart disease were randomized to either an intervention, an average of 5 visits with a health coach over 6 months, or a control group. (Groeneveld, et al, JOEM 2011 53:610 . I’ll post a link in the future – the article isn’t yet indexed in pubmed)
The good news – the construction workers lost weight. On average, they lost 2 kg (4.4 lbs).
The unsurprising bad news – the intervention wasn’t cheap, and the cost of the intervention group exceeded the cost for the control group. The cost for each pound of weight loss was 145 euros ($210). The cost over 12 months of the intervened workers, including all health care costs, work productivity, and any costs of lifestyle related expenses, was 254 euros more ($369) than the control group.
There are a lot of programs out there promising to deliver lower weight and short-term decrease in health care costs. Some of them give statistics on average weight loss of those who lost weight, utterly ignoring any participants who gain weight. Most assess weight loss over a very short period of time, ignoring the fact that many who initially lose weight gain it right back again. Most programs impute savings based on the fact that skinnier people have lower health care costs.
However, those who were overweight don’t necessarily cost less immediately after successful weight loss. Further, there are precious few programs that help patients lose weight and keep it off. In fact, the evidence for bariatric surgery is good, and the evidence of sustained effectiveness for all other interventions is modest to nonexistent.
Treating the obese is not the way to address this major public health and health care cost crisis.
What we need is public health interventions to make it easier to exercise and easier to get filling, nutritious, and healthy food – even in the hurried lifestyle we lead. Many efforts, like zoning laws to encourage dense housing in close proximity to public transit, could take more than a generation to bear fruit. Bike lanes, bike racks, and walking paths can take years to plan and build. Other initiatives, like posting of calories, or employers offering healthy frozen dinners to take home, could have an impact much sooner.
None of these interventions will save health care dollars today - they can decrease obesity and prevent health care expenses much later.
Preventing obesity won’t be easy – but it’s more likely to be successful and affordable than merely treating those who are already obese.
