Obesity a crushing weight on U.S. health care

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Obesity is the elephant in the room of health care reform, a public health catastrophe that kills more than 100,000 Americans a year, cost the nation $147 billion last year and threatens to shorten U.S. life expectancy for the first time since the Civil War.

Whatever Washington does this year to reduce medical spending seems likely to be swamped by the nation's rising weight. Obesity lurks behind the top chronic illnesses - heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and colon, breast and prostate cancers, among many others - whose treatments routinely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One of every three Americans, and one of every four Californians, is obese and rates are rising at an alarming pace, particularly among children, experts say.

"Rising obesity rates are increasing health care expenditures per person in a way that is going to be very difficult to finance," said Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor and health economist at Stanford University's Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.

Put down that fork.