Obese men cost the country billions!

I was intrigued to read in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend about this ‘contraversial’ plan that doctors can refer overweight people to a commercial weight loss prgrams and then claim the cost on Medicare. Did you miss the article? Click here to read: Obese to get fit on taxpayer.

Ther crux of the article was: “Professor Boyd Swinburn, director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, said if the government spent half a billion dollars on cholesterol-lowering drugs a year, it should subsidise commercial diet programs as well.”

And Prof Swinburn is absolutely right! We are spending billions of dollars directly on the obesity epidemic in Australia. Infact Access Economics released a report earlier this year that states: “The $3.7 billion were the financial costs of obesity, and on top of that there are about another $17 billion which were the loss of healthy life caused by obesity. That’s because obesity is linked to cardiovascular diseases, to diabetes type two, and also to osteoarthritis and a number of cancers.”

The obesity levels of Australian population is still increasing at about 0.5 per cent of the population every year, over the last decade, and if we continued to increase at that rate, we’d actually have about 7.2 million Australians who are obese by 2025, which would be 28.9 per cent of the population.

So if we know about 43% of the Aussie population are either overweight or obese, lets do some numbers, it equates to about 9,460,00 Aussies. If each of them received $100, the cost is just $9 billion – we still have change from the $20.7 billion we are paying in obesity illness and we are affecting overweight and obese people. In fact, we could rebate $200 and still get change!

But my REAL problem with this idea is what about the non-obese people who are getting fit. These people are saving the country bucket loads of money as they are staying healthy at their post tax cost. So where is the equity in helping people be pro-active in improving their health.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting people get a rebate on gym memberships just for joining! They must use the exercise program they enrol in and perhaps have regular tests to show improvements and if there is an improvement, then some of the cost for getting fit should be able to be claimed.

With a healthier 22 million Aussies who each receive a $200 Medicare rebate for training 125 times a year, we would have a health system that looked after really sick people. We would have increased productivity in the work force to cover the costs. We would open a larger fitness and health industry, offering more employment opportunities. And we’d have a happier population.

So Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott how about getting pro-active?

Related articles

• Obesity Costing States Billion in Yearly Medical Expenses (nlm.nih.gov)
• The Great Fat Fraud: Why the “Obesity Epidemic” Isn’t, How to Be Totally Healthy (ridwan2906.wordpress.com)
• Alberta rolls out five-year anti-obesity strategy (canada.com)
• Excuses Hamper Obesity’s Defeat (via Fat Then Fit Now) (joeleonardi.wordpress.com)
• Feed the Brain to Keep Weight Off (abcnews.go.com)
• Childhood Obesity Part 14 (reidmillerwrites.wordpress.com)

FYI – I do really love this campaign. I think this is one of the best campaigns we have seen . . . what do you think?