Fat people cheaper to treat, study says

[kurth]

Fat people cheaper to treat, study says
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer

LONDON - Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

"It was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. "But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more."

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

Van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the "healthy-living" group (thin and non-smoking), obese people, and smokers. The model relied on "cost of illness" data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003. The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080205/ap_on_he_me/obesity_cost

[TomInTib]

1. Oh, great...

now us healthy ones will probably pay higher premiums.

"I'm sorry, TomInTib, but your low body-fat index puts you in our Long Risk Matrix."

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Save money! Die young! nt