The Economics of a Healthy Diet

Disclaimer: I only have 45 minutes to write this before class, so you won't have to endure a long, enduring rant.

The economics of obesity are staggering. The North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NASSO) tags the deaths in the USA alone due to obesity and obesity-related factors ("diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, gallbladder disease, liver disease, lung diseases, arthritis, sleep disorders, and premature death") at a freakish 300,000 per year. That's over half as many deaths per year as from cancer (550,270, just in case you were counting). If that isn't a chilling statistic, I don't know what is. Am I going to go out on a limb and say that all 300,000 of those were preventable? Of course not. I know how easy it is to gain weight, especially when you're working full-time with a long commute each day. You feel exhausted from sitting at a desk all day and the least thing you want to worry about is what you're eating or spending another 30-40 minutes exercising. In a span of four months, I gained twenty pounds...and I can guarantee most of it wasn't muscle.

Still though...300,000 deaths per year? That's atrocious.

Now, the libertarian in me wags my finger at the statistician in me, reminding me that people have the right to cram whatever they want down their throats and it's hardly my responsibility to tell people what they can and cannot eat or how they should spend their day. It's the same reason that I don't mind that people smoke (so long as they blow their smoke upwards and not, y'know, in my face). In fact, eating is even less dangerous to my health: while I could receive some damage from second-hand smoke, I certainly can't pay any penalty for someone else eating a 10 oz. rare steak, along with some french fries and chug it all down with two or three cans of Coke...right?

(*coughs* We're going to ignore the fact that I've done that before, provided that you replace Coke with that of the diet variety...)

Well, I certainly could be paying a price. Two, in fact. The first is the indirect one - that people who eat unhealthy diets are more likely to become obese and contract obesity-related disorders and diseases like the ones mentioned above. When these disorders kick in, they put a significant (and mostly preventable) strain on the medical profession, much of which is already strained to the limit by less-preventable troubles (think cancer, old age, or fatal accidents). Seeing as how there aren't many private hospitals out there that most people can afford, this puts an even greater strain on the public health system. Since cities, states, and the federal government can never seem to find enough money for hospitals, that keeps the supply of them (along with their necessary components...doctors, nurses, etc.) stagnant...or falling, in some cases.

When you have an already-stretched supply straining under the weight of baby boomers that are getting older, you have trouble (and no, I'm not blaming baby boomers for this particular problem...well...okay, maybe just a little). Now add a few million more Americans whose belts are already at the breaking point coming into the ER because they collapsed from exhaustion while trying to climb a flight of stairs and hit their head on the railing...well, that's worse.

Another scary stat: roughly $100 billion a year goes to treating obesity-related health problems. Again: stagnant supply, rapidly rising demand...bingo! Higher costs. Prices rise for everyone, including those who aren't quaffing from the deep-fried cholesterol spring. So I have to deal with higher prices on that end, thank you very much. Not to mention it means I have to make an appointment for something as routine as a physical over three months in advance.

There's another problem, too. I'm not just a consumer; I'm a taxpayer. Even though the United States doesn't have universal health care, I still pay payroll taxes for Medicare and Medicaid (health-care assistance from the government to the elderly and the poor, respectively). When their premiums go up along with everyone else's due to the obesity pandemic (epidemic is a serious understatement), my tax burden upon them increases by taking away funds that otherwise would be spent on other programs. At the very least it would keep the deficit from rising that much more.

Am I suggesting that fat people shouldn't get health care? Again, of course not. Everyone could help out in helping people live more active, healthy lives. Companies could just as easily hire in-house physicians to do complete physical workups on their employees to help spot obesity problems early, when they're not nearly as much of a financial strain on anyone's health care costs. Not to mention that in-house physcians could become a huge asset to any employee: instead of having to wait three months for an appointment (like me), employees could just go see their company physician, who can give them tips to live a healthier lifestyle. It's in the company's best interest to have healthy employees: with better help comes more energy, fewer health liabilities...which all add up to more productive workers. Companies don't need to become nanny-corporations for the sake of the country...but because it helps the bottom line.

This proposal is slightly more ambitious than the CDC's, which suggests more modest interventions and such instead of longer-term solutions. Even theirs puts the cost of such interventions at less than a dollar per employee. By any measure, that's a whole ton cheaper than the cost a company has to pay in fatter health-care costs for their employee's health insurance.

Does this proposal invade the personal rights or responsibilities of individuals to eat what they want, when they want, without having a doctor pester them about their weight? I don't exactly consider "the right to be free from pestering" a constitutional right, so that's a bit moot...seriously, though. Would this lead to some sort of battle to hire only the healtiest workers, leaving the more overweight among us jobless? The idea that employers would hire people based not on what they know but on their pants size seems a little silly by any stretch of the imagination. Even in the ludicrous world in which that did happen, companies would try to hire healthier employees anyway, in order to minimize the potential health care cost to the company's bottom line.

Are companies the only entities who have a vested interest in keeping healthy? Noppers. We all have our own responsibilities to ourselves, our families, our firms, and our country.

We're all going to die sometime, true. In fact, the vast, vast majority of us can't choose the way in which we will eventually expire. But at least we won't have to worry about the indignity of our next of kin having to request an "XL" coffin for us when we do.