The average overweight Briton costs the healthcare system at least £1,000 a year in healthcare costs, a major new analysis suggests.
But those considered very obese, with a body mass index above 40, cost the NHS around £5,000 a head due to weight-related health problems.
The study, conducted by the firm Lane, Clark & Peacock (LCP), I found that, Like the average British waistline, the problem seems to grow with time.
The average annual cost of treating the most severely obese Britons has risen from £1,300 in 2015 to £1,900 for 2019, the final year of the study.
This is thought to be because improvements in treatments have prolonged people’s lives, thus prolonging the need for care.
By specific health condition, heart failure was the most expensive per patient, costing just over £3,650 and £4,320 across weight categories. This was followed by kidney disease, costing between £2,900 and almost £4,200, and cardiovascular disease, costing almost £2,700 and just under £3,500.
Hospital admissions for obese Britons accounted for the biggest overall expense, followed by prescriptions for drugs to help them manage the consequences of excess weight, averaging almost £340 per year for the heaviest patients. This was followed by primary care services, such as GP visits, which could cost an average of £287 per year per patient.
There is abundant evidence showing that obesity can increase the risk of a range of life-limiting diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and several types of cancer.
Excess weight is estimated to be a factor in one in 20 cancer cases in Britain, according to Cancer Research UK.
By specific obesity-related health condition, heart failure was found to be the most costly per patient, costing between £3,650 and £4,320, depending on weight categories.
This was followed by kidney disease, costing between £2,900 and almost £4,200, and cardiovascular disease, costing between £2,700 and £3,500.
Other costly health conditions linked to excess weight include repairing damage to joints such as the knees, as well as mental health problems such as depression.
Costs cover services such as emergency admissions, planned hospital procedures, regular health checks for diabetes and high blood pressure, prescriptions and GP appointments.
Although costs of thousands of dollars may seem minuscule compared to multi-million pound NHS budgets, when scaled up to reflect the quarter of British people who are obese, the annual bill is thought to run into billions.
Not surprisingly, costs for the most obese Britons are 64 per cent higher than for those Britons classified as overweight.
But, surprisingly, the analysts, who published their findings in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, found that obese Britons accounted for 72 per cent of all recorded healthcare costs.
The authors said this was because those in the heaviest category were more likely to have multiple obesity-linked health problems that were driving up the bills.
They found that a third of the most obese Britons had a one in three chance of living with at least two obesity-related health problems, compared with just a quarter of those who were simply overweight.
This led to obese patients with three or more obesity-related conditions having approximately twice the estimated health care costs than those patients in the study with only one of those conditions.
Hospital admissions for obese Britons accounted for the biggest overall expenditure, followed by prescriptions for drugs to help them manage the consequences of excess weight.
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This was followed by primary care services, such as GP visits, which could cost an average of £287 a year per patient.
Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, senior author of the analysis and head of the LCP analysis team, said: “Our studies highlight that healthcare costs increase with BMI and are higher in those living with more severe obesity and those living with common comorbidities such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and depression.”
But he added that this cost also demonstrates the benefit, both to patients and to the taxpayer, that could be obtained by preventing obesity.
The study had a number of limitations, including, because it was observational, not being able to directly link the health problems suffered by the participants with their obesity.
For example, although depression has been linked to obesity, analysts had no way of determining whether a particular case of mental health disorder was directly related to weight or another factor.
This latest analysis follows another published late last year which concluded that Britain’s growing obesity crisis was now costing the country almost £100bn a year.
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According to the BMI system, a score of 18.5 to 25 is considered healthy. A score of 25 to 29 is considered overweight, and a score of 30 or more means a person is obese, the stage at which the chances of getting sick increase.
This colossal total figure includes both the cost of obesity treatment to the NHS and secondary costs such as lost income from time off work due to illness and premature deaths from weight-related health problems.
Experts have attributed the country’s steadily increasing waistline to the simultaneous rise in calorie-laden processed, junk and ultra-processed foods and modern sedentary, desk-bound lifestyles.
Today, two-thirds of adults are overweight, compared with just half in the mid-1990s. Of these, about a quarter are obese.
In terms of obesity, this equates to 16.8 million people, of whom an estimated 8 million are women, 7.4 million men, 760,000 boys and 590,000 girls.
Ministers had previously hoped a wave of new obesity drugs, such as the weight-loss vaccine Wegovy, would help turn the tide of the crisis as more Britons returned to work.
The previous Conservative government had already proposed plans to launch breakthrough drugs to cut the country’s bloated benefits bill.
The now-elected Labour government has previously outlined plans to implement a 9pm cut-off for junk food advertising on television in a bid to tackle childhood obesity.
