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Weight & Health Insurance Premiums

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Weight & Health Insurance Premiums
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Weight directly affects your health, which directly affects your healthcare costs.

All things are inter-related, especially when we are talking about our bodies. Keeping our height and weight in proportion is extremely important. In fact, "obese" is defined as 30 or more pounds overweight. "Morbidly obese" is 80 or more pounds overweight. About 31% of Americans are considered obese. According to an ongoing study of 14,000 Americans, the average annual cost for health care of a "healthy-weight" person in 2002 was $2,210. The cost of treating an obese person was $3,454 or $1,244 more than the cost of an average-weight person. "Costs are up because so many more Americans are obese and because they're being more aggressively treated for weight-related illnesses," says lead author of the study and chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory University, Kenneth Thorpe.

arrow What are weight-related illnesses? Consider some of the following:

  • High cholesterol
  • High blood pressure
  • Upper gastrointestinal disorders
  • Adult-onset diabetes
  • And even mental disorders


arrow More sobering statistics from the Emory study:

About 25% of the extremely obese (80 or more pounds overweight) were being treated for six or more conditions in 2002, and the increase in adult-onset diabetes contributed to a 64% rise in diabetes treatment from 1987 to 2002. The study went on to state that overall employers and privately insured families spent $36.5 billion on obesity-linked illnesses in 2002 or 11.6% of the total health care spending was on obesity. A 2003 study by RIT International and CDC Control and Prevention showed that obese and overweight Americans racked up about $75 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2003.

Missing the Point

"Most of what is going on now to try to control health care spending is missing the target," Thorpe says. "Companies are tweaking co-pays and talking about health care savings accounts when really they need to redirect their focus to reduce the prevalence of obesity among children and workers."

Page last updated September 23, 2009