Expanding Waistlines May Boost U.S. Health Cost $66 Billion a Year by 2030

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-25/expanding-waistlines-may-boost-u-s-health-cost-66-billion-a-year-by-2030.html

Almost 100 million Americans and 15 million Britons are already considered obese, based on body-mass index, a ratio of weight to height, Y. Claire Wang, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York, said yesterday at a London news conference.

Another 65 million American adults and another 11 million British adults would join them in the next two decades based on past trends, said Wang, one of the authors of a four-part series on obesity published in today’s Lancet. The increased cost represents about 2.6 percent of the U.S.’s annual health-care bill. In the U.K., costs would rise as much as 2 billion pounds ($3.3 billion) a year, or 2 percent of yearly health spending.