Obesity Is a Class Issue

The social factors behind these escalating childhood and adolescent epidemics are well-known:

Rising income inequality, poor diet, unrestricted television junk food advertising aimed at children and young adults, sedentary lifestyles.

Rising rates of pre-term and multiple births, environmental exposures - especially for poor, urban children.

Rarely do discussions of the problem deal with some of the real issues underlying the rise in obesity — poverty and disadvantage.

It has become fashionable to believe that in the modern 'classless' America such features of society are no longer with us — that we are all now 'middle class' and that the old social and economic distinctions that were once an intrinsic feature of our culture have been consigned to history.

Not so, sadly, for the people of poverty 'black holes' where life expectancy is around 60 and falling and where the average diet is about as unhealthy as it can get.

Obesity is but one of the symptoms of the impoverishment that plagues their lives.

A lot of people are on benefits, living from week to week, relying on convenience foods and eating out of fast-food joints.

Give people jobs and the ability to be masters of their own destinies and they will make healthy decisions about their lives.

You can't blame the people when they are victims of circumstances. It's not really a medical problem, it's something for the politicians to sort out.

I hope the drop in life expectancy is a turning point and the politicians are called to account. They should hang their heads in shame.

Poor health is a well-known feature of deprivation. Mothers are not daft and they do know soda drinks and potato chips are bad for children but they can't afford the alternative. The Government has to give them the means.

Initiatives are not going to change anything unless you've got the cash in your pocket.

The real roots of obesity are conveniently hidden away from the chattering classes who wield disproportionate influence when it comes to developing 'popular' solutions to societal problems.

These are not things that the media wish us to read about. For a start, it may well affect their advertising revenue. We can't have that, can we?

The function of the 'spectacle' [the infotainment industry] is to keep us passive. It ensures an obedient, listless population. Who cares if a side effect is obesity?

Young Americans are fatter than ever,

leading to $100 billion more a year in costs

- in a country that does nothing about health care.

Pity poor Michael Moore. With Cannes-sensation Sicko set to open nationally amid more press attention than an Angelina Jolie sighting, the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chose this week to release the latest data on the US population without health insurance.

It's down to 43.6 million people in 2006 from 46.6 million the previous year.

Is this a government plot to deflect attention from the core message of his documentary - that America's profit-driven health-insurance system is immoral and needs to be replaced with a national health service along the lines of the western European, Canadian or (let's admit it, this took chutzpah) Cuban models?

The CDC news isn't as good as it seems. The latest tally of the ranks of the uninsured remains two million people higher than 2001, the last time the business cycle peaked.

Even on a percentage basis, the numbers are up with the latest survey showing more people - 14.8%, or one in every seven persons - running the risk of personal bankruptcy and inadequate care because of no insurance than when President Bush took office.

While it's probably not the president's fault that employers are bailing out of the US job-based health insurance system, it is fair to blame him for a lost decade in dealing with this escalating crisis.

And despite this latest dip in the ranks of the uninsured, the crisis is only going to get worse in the coming decade.

According to a new report out today, the health care system faces an unprecedented public health time bomb: the next generation of young people is going to need far more in the way of health-care services than previous 20- and 30-something generations.

You'd think that with 77 million baby boomers moving toward retirement where taxpayer-financed Medicare picks up the health-care tab, employers would get some breathing room.

Younger workers generally require much less health care, which translates into lower insurance costs for those who employ them.

But the study in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association documents a grim prognosis for the next generation of workers.

They are going to be fatter, more asthmatic, and suffering from far more neurological disorders than any previous generation of American young people. And it's young people who are most likely to go without health-care coverage.

"We're going to see increased health expenditures for people in their 20s," said James Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School and lead author of the report. "They'll be coming to institutions for health care without any means of paying for it."

How bad is it? About 18% of American children and adolescents are now considered obese, up from just 5% in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were entering the workforce.

That translates into earlier onset of type 2 diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, chronic conditions that usually require ongoing, often lifelong medical interventions. With obesity already accounting for 10% of medical expenses, a doubling of adult rates will add $100bn a year to health-care costs, according to the study.

Childhood asthma persists into adulthood for about a quarter of all people afflicted with the wheezing disorder. And today, about one in every 11 young persons has asthma, double the rate of the 1980s.

Again, that translates into millions of young workers who will need immediate health-care assistance as they enter the workforce, even as they lose work days and productivity because of their condition.

Ditto for neurological disorders like attention deficit disorder and autism, which were virtually unheard of in the 1960s and 70s.

Perrin and his fellow authors admit that some of the reported rise in these conditions may be associated with diagnostic creep.

But whatever the cause, children who need treatments are much more likely to turn into adults who need treatment, and that translates into higher costs.

"Employees with mental health conditions generate about three times the health care costs of other employees," the authors noted.

Finally, blacks, Hispanics, native Americans and low-income whites suffer far higher rates of obesity, asthma and attention deficit disorder compared to their better-off counterparts.

These are precisely the groups in society most likely to be without health insurance.

The social factors behind these escalating childhood and adolescent epidemics are well-known: rising income inequality, poor diet, unrestricted television junk food advertising aimed at children and young adults.

Sedentary lifestyles, rising rates of pre-term and multiple births, environmental exposures - especially for poor, urban children. Universal health insurance doesn't ameliorate any of them.

We've already been told that if the social factors leading to these epidemics go unaddressed, the next generation of Americans may be the first in our history to lead shorter lives.

What this latest study points out is that they're also going to consume a lot more health care all along the way. Merrill Goozner @ CIF

tags: fat  obesity  young  health care  passive  infotainment  obedient  spectacle  class  

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