re: Obesity to overtake smoking as the #1 cause of preventable cancer

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Yet only about half of Americans are aware of the link between excess weight and cancer.

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And our government would be way too chickenshit to launch anti-fat ad campaigns like they do for smoking.

Which have been hugely successful.

Instead they stop giving kids recess and/or making them compete in sports outdoors.

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Think it's cheaper for feds to make everyone fat so they die out early

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This is quite literally the opposite of true

Fat people have far more medical conditions. And a larger percentage of medicaid and medicare patients are obese than commercial insurance patients.

Obesity costs our government and tax payers tens of billions, if not more.

I work in healthcare and look at these stats on a daily basis.

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The stats give mixed evidence dude

Keeping a healthy person alive into old age ain't cheap

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The stats around medicaid aren't remotely "mixed". Obesity caused/worsened co-morbidities are the biggest drain on our government funded healthcare system and it is not really close.

And usually being overweight as an old person is still more expensive for a shorter time than keeping a skinny, healthy old person alive for longer. They have a much larger percentage of expensive heart surgeries, etc. that outweigh those extra years of being alive.

ETA:

I build models for our company that take into account a certain regions demographics, payer mix (medicare/medicaid %) and obesity rates (and other public health info) and create valuations that we use it when looking at investing or divesting assets.

That is what I do for a living.

Frankly I hope they eat themselves into the grave as fast as possible

you must not be very good at your job dude

hundreds of studies out there say being healthy into old age costs us more

Google yourself or you'll be fired eventually

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hundreds of studies out there say being healthy into old age costs us more

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Yes we know a socialist like yourself that wants government controlled health care will celebrate the death panels and surgery refusals for old people.

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you must not be very good at your job dude

hundreds of studies out there say being healthy into old age costs us more

Google yourself or you'll be fired eventually

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First of all, I am obviously speaking mostly to medicaid, as I've stated. Old people are admittedly a different animal.

Secondly, there is a difference in dying early and dying after 5-10 years of heart attacks and cancer treatments on Medicare. Yes, there are studies that show dying of a massive heart attack at 66 is cheaper than living to 80. But what we're seeing with modern medicine, is the obesity caused co-morbidities are not killing people as fast. They're hanging the on.

And then you have the fat people that spent their lives on Medicaid living off the government teet that die early after they switch to medicare at 65, They are in those stats.

I work for the largest healthcare company in the country and I've seen the costs of medicaid and medicare (to an extent) for overweight people. The cost is insane and its rapidly rising.

All those thyroids are acting up

Another thing to note, most studies don't include all of the obesity caused/worsened co-morbidities when they show stats showing its cheaper to die younger from being fat than die old and healthy.

Obesity causes or worsens just about everything.

And now modern medicine is keeping these people alive a lot longer with all of these health problems. Most of the studies are not as recent and obesity rates are on a crazy trajectory right now.

Another fun thing to research is also the indirect cost via loss of work time and higher insurance premiums for all.