More Americans are paying the costs of the obesity epidemic - both physically and financially – than Europeans. A new study finds nearly twice as many adults in the U.S. are obese compared to adults in Europe. And it’s causing more Americans to develop cancer, diabetes, and other chronic ailments.
It’s also quite costly. The report shows treating diseases stemming from obesity adds between $100-$150 billion in health care spending in the U.S. each year. The results are published in the October 2 online edition of Health Affairs.
Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta compared data from 2004 on the prevalence and treatment of diseases among adults age 50 and older in the United States and ten countries in Europe – Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
The study shows 33.1-percent of adult Americans were obese compared to 17.1-percent of Europeans. It also finds 53-percent of adults in the U.S. had smoked or were current smokers compared with 43-percent of those in Europe. And much more Americans had conditions associated with obesity such as heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes.
Besides obesity and smoking, researchers note other reasons for the high costs of chronic disease in the United States, including more aggressive cancer screenings and more intensive drug treatments than in Europe.
The study says prevention is the key to reducing these chronic diseases and their costs. And according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 80-percent of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke could be eliminated by reducing smoking and obesity.
