Health Care Costs Driven Significantly Higher By Metabolic Syndrome Risk Factors

All the more reason to tax the fatsos more and the rest of us less.

"Risk factors for metabolic syndrome, such as obesity, high blood pressure, and elevated blood lipid levels, can increase a person's healthcare costs nearly 1.6-fold, or about $2,000 per year. For each additional risk factor those costs rise an average of 24%, according to an illuminating article in a recent issue of Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online at http://www.liebertpub.com/met

A two-year study that compared annual healthcare costs for people with and without diabetes found both higher healthcare utilization and significantly greater expenses ($5,732 versus $3,581 per year) for those who had risk factors for metabolic syndrome. A group of researchers from the Center for Health Studies (Seattle, WA); United BioSource Corp. (Bethesda, MD); University of Arizona, Tucson; Kaiser Permanente's Colorado Clinical Research Unit in Denver and Northwest Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon; Genzyme (Cambridge, MA); and Sanofi-Aventis (Bridgewater, NJ), led by D.M. Boudreau, PhD, from United BioSource, evaluated healthcare utilization among more than 170,000 men and women, approximately 58% of whom had risk factors for metabolic syndrome.

The study, entitled 'Health Care Utilization and Costs by Metabolic Syndrome Risk Factors,' also compared the annual healthcare costs for subjects who had both diabetes and metabolic syndrome risk factors and found them to be nearly double the costs for people who did not have diabetes but had similar risk factors for metabolic syndrome ($8,067 vs. $4,638)."

No more bailouts for the calorically irresponsible.