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Employers
Target Obesity
Linked Health Costs
Excerpt
By
Kim Dixon,
Reuters
Health
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Fortune 500
companies from carmaker Ford Motor Co. to cereal producer General
Mills Inc. said on Tuesday they will work together to fight an
obesity epidemic in America that is hiking their costs.
Obesity shaves $12 billion
from companies' budgets each year because of health-care costs,
according to one estimate by the Washington Business Group on
Health, an employer group that lobbies on health policy.
"There are a lot of interventions
that work but we haven't focused on it," said Helen Darling, president
of the lobbying group. "This is like smoking 30 years ago."
In response, Darling's group is
setting up an institute to coordinate efforts across companies
to identify costs and potential fixes. Health professionals, including
officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
will also take part.
The group aims to coordinate companies'
fat-fighting efforts, holding joint weight-management meetings
for workers, setting up a Web site to disseminate best practices
about what works and what doesn't and holding a "corporate summit"
to address the issue.
The employers said they had been
negligent about obesity and its impact for too long.
Detroit-based Ford is the second-biggest
private buyer of health care in the country, having paid about
$3 billion for nearly 650,000 current and former employees'
care last year, an official said.
"We're in it one way or another,"
said Vincent Kerr, a Ford company physician involved with the
new institute.
OBESE COST MORE
From prescription drug spending
to hospital costs, obese individuals account for a bigger slice
of a company's health-care dollar.
For example, employers spend 77
percent more on prescription drugs for the seriously overweight,
Darling said.
"I think obesity is the tsunami
of the future and if we don't deal with this problem, we will
all be swamped by its impact," Darling said.
Obesity is a risk factor for chronic
diseases like diabetes. Employers face lost productivity, higher
prescription drug costs to treat chronic ailments and more hospital
stays.
Excess weight is also linked to
heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure.
A high-profile lawsuit against
hamburger maker McDonald's Corp., blaming the company for childhood
obesity, was dismissed in January, though the restaurant industry
is bracing for more lawsuits.
Employers, meanwhile, are seeing
health-care costs consume a greater share of employees' benefit
costs.
Total U.S. health-care spending
hit $1.5 trillion for 2002, comprising roughly 15 percent
of the U.S. gross national product, according to data from the
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The amount is
expected to nearly double in the next decade.
The U.S. spends as much on these
obesity-related illnesses as on conditions related to smoking,
yet has neglected efforts to stem the tide, a separate report
published in the journal Health Affairs, said in May.
Reference
Source 89
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