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Obesity Epidemic Costs Connecticut in Real Dollars— Governor Urged to Sign School Nutrition Bill

Press Release

Children Eating

[Hartford, Connecticut, June 7, 2005] Sixty-five percent of Americans are now considered to be overweight or obese, according to the April 2005 journal of the American College of Physicians. Experts estimate that of the overweight and obese children, two-thirds will become overweight or obese adults.

“Obesity is as costly to society as smoking,” said Eric Finkelstein, lead researcher for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on the cost of the obesity epidemic. “With the prevalence of obesity increasing by 70 percent over the past decade, the expenditure estimates should be a wake-up call. Obesity-attributable expenditures will likely continue to increase unless something fairly drastic is done.”

The study shows that obesity-related health-care costs in the United States reached an estimated $75 billion in 2003, with taxpayers footing the bill for about half of those expenses through Medicare and Medicaid.

According to the study, Connecticut taxpayers paid $665 million for obesity-related illnesses in 2003. Of the $856 million paid that year in total costs for obesity-related illnesses in Connecticut, the state’s $665-million share represents $246 million in Medicare costs and $419 million in Medicaid costs, while $191 million was picked up by private insurance companies.

These figures reveal that Connecticut pays 77 percent of the state’s obesity-related health-care costs, well above the national average of 50 percent.

“There has been a debate about whether obesity is a personal or societal issue and whether the government has any business being involved,” Finkelstein said. “The fact that the government, and ultimately the taxpayer, is financing half the economic burden of obesity suggests that the government has a clear justification to try to reduce obesity rates.”

The CDC study should alarm lawmakers in Connecticut, including Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

Environment and Human Health, Inc.’s (EHHI) year-long research study, The State of Nutrition and Physical Activity in Our Schools, found that both the nutrition situation and the lack of physical activity in the Connecticut schools were alarming, and that local boards of education had done little.

In summary, EHHI found that eating opportunities existed in the schools for much of the day, while physical education was offered barely at all. The report recommended state intervention.

Although the governor says local boards of education can address these concerns, the report shows that most local boards of education have done almost nothing to improve the situation.

Robert LaCamera, M.D., Yale Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, said, “It is vital that the state set the standards for all schools so that all children in Connecticut have the same healthy nutritional opportunities when at school. If the state fails to do this, it will pay mightily in health care costs in the future.”

“Dentists have long recognized the link between good oral health and sound nutrition,” said Dean G. Cloutier, D.D.S., president of the Conn. State Dental Association, imploring Rell to support the school nutrition bill. “We share medicine's concern that our young patients are consuming increasing quantities of sodas, sweetened fruit drinks and non-nutritious snack foods. The science is indisputable that increased sugar causes increased dental decay. Dentistry has provided the science and voiced this concern for years. The American Dental Association (ADA) opposes contractual arrangements in schools that promote increased access to soft drinks for children.”

“While the availability of junk food in the schools has increased incrementally over the years, the physical education opportunities have greatly decreased,” said Nancy Alderman, President of EHHI. “Not a single school in our study at any level met the national recommendations for daily physical education.”

Susan Addiss, Director of Health Education for EHHI and Past Commissioner of the Conn. Department of Public Health, added, “School children today will face the prospect of having shorter life spans than their parents might expect, if measures are not taken soon to arrest the overweight and obesity crisis.”

D. Barry Boyd, MD, a medical oncologist, affiliate member of the Yale Cancer Center and a board member of EHHI, said, “My particular concern is between the links between adolescent and young adult weight gain and the risk and mortality of later adult cancers, particularly post-menopausal breast cancer. These are not theoretical risks, but well defined now in the cancer epidemiology literature.”

“If the state does not intervene now and help the schools improve their lot, the state will be paying the medical costs later when these children become overweight and obese adults,” concluded Alderman.

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