Health care cost burden for obese getting heavier

The problem:

"Caring for obese people is eating up an ever-bigger slice of the US health care spending pie, a new government report shows."

The solution: stop caring for them.

"From 2001 to 2006, health care expenditures on obese adults rose from $167 billion to $303 billion, an 82 percent jump, according to an analysis by Marie N. Stagnitti, a senior survey statistician at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, Maryland.

Costs for overweight individuals rose 36 percent, from $202 billion to $275 billion, while spending on normal-weight people rose 25 percent, from $208 billion to $260 billion."

One place not to turn for solutions is to this Stagnitti idiot.

"'Obviously we need to get this under control,' Stagnitti told Reuters Health. 'This is just another way to cut the data show that, especially for the obese population, we need to figure out what's going on there.'"(sic)

When someone is so stupid that they "need to figure out what's going on," re: overweight/obesity, it is time to put them out of our misery.

There is one thing and one thing only going on - more Calories in than out.

With sh*theads like Stagnitti and her ilk in positions of influence there can be only hope.

And hope is one pis*-poor action plan.

"Obese people accounted for 28 percent of total health care spending in 2001, and 35 percent in 2006, the researcher found, while normal-weight people's share of these costs dropped from 35 percent to 30 percent.

During that time the number of obese adults in the US rose from 48 million to 59 million, while the number of normal weight adults actually fell slightly, from 79.6 million to 78.3 million."

Note that these figures do not include the merely overweight.

"During the survey period, the proportion of overweight and obese people in the US population grew, which likely accounts for some of the increases in costs; in 2001, 23.6 percent of US adults were obese and 39 percent were normal-weight, compared to 27.2 percent and 36.1 percent, respectively, in 2006."

Ah, here they are. Can't forget the other elephants in the room.

And they are growing, too. In number and size.

"Stagnitti's analysis also showed that obese people accounted for the lion's share of the US population with at least a single chronic disease, like heart disease or diabetes. In 2001, 57.1 percent were obese, and in 2006 59.7 percent were obese."

Let 'em live with their diseases of choice or pay for 'em themselves.

Nothing else will work to stem the tide.

And if any of you have a chance to speak with the Dear and Fearless Leaders in DC, please tell them to stick their sick care reform plans up their fat (insert body parts).

Nothing will work to stem the costs of a repair and rescue industry - no funding scheme, no Counseling For Clunkers (tm) Program or Counseling 4 Clunkers (tm) Program, no nothing - except a better product entering the system.

Until they fix the fat, the rest of the system has no chance of improving.