Weighty problem clogging U.S. health insurance

Americans are living large — and health officials say it is costing them their health and savings.

One-third of the American population is obese. Another third is overweight.

"It's more than double what it was 30 years ago," said Jason Eberhart-Phillips, state health officer and director of health at the Kansas Department of Health and Education.

Eberhart-Phillips said the consequences of the nation's widening waistline are serious: an increase in the risk of hypertension, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, respiratory problems and cancers of the endometrium, breast, prostate gland and colon.

"As obesity goes up, it drives up long-term health conditions and puts a burden on all of us through taxes and health insurance costs," he said. "Society is using more and more of its treasure to treat these conditions."

Kate Watson, manager for the diabetes prevention and control program with Bureau of Health Promotion at KDHE, said diabetes is one of the most common and costly chronic health conditions in Kansas.

In Kansas, 8.1 percent of adults — about 170,000 people — have been diagnosed with diabetes and nearly 113,000 more have diabetes but are undiagnosed. In the past five years, 35,000 Kansans were newly diagnosed.

Treating diabetes costs the United States $174 billion a year — and Kansas $1.56 billion a year. If the diabetes treatment industry were its own country, Eberhart-Phillips said, it would be the 45th-largest economy in the world.

"The economic burden of diabetes in Kansas amounts to a tax on every woman, man and child in the state of about $566 per year, a tax that has been increasing by 32 percent in the past six years," Eberhart-Phillips said.

"All of us are paying this tax, whether we have diabetes or not, through our health insurance premiums and income taxes. Even if our health insurance is paid by our employer, this 'diabetes tax' is coming out of our own pockets through wage increases that we aren't getting because of escalating insurance premiums."

Watson said the state could save $32 million a year if 3,000 people with undiagnosed diabetes could be identified and admitted to a lifestyle modification program.

The cause

So, how did Americans get so fat? What has changed to cause obesity rates to skyrocket?

"Diseases are either due to genetics or the environment, or the interaction between the two," Eberhart-Phillips said. "A person's genes don't change, so it must be the environment that is changing.

BY THE NUMBERS

— Two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese.