The Health And Cost Consequences Of Obesity Among The Future Elderly

Lakdawalla, Darius; Goldman, Dana P.; Shang, Baoping

doi:10.1377/hlthaff.w5.r30

Cited by 140 publications

(135 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…To the extent that this generation of baby-boomers and postbaby-boomers are approaching retirement with a higher prevalence of chronic diseases, we might expect a more rapid rise in expenditures for those newly covered by disability insurance and Medicare, and a sooner-than-expected date at which the Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicare trust funds run dry (3).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Losing ground at midlife in America

Meara

Skinner

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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confidence: 99%

Losing ground at midlife in America

Meara

Skinner

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…The paper by Lakdawalla and colleagues addresses one of the hottest issues now being debated in the public health arena: the health effects of obesity. 5 …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting The Future Of U.S. Health And Longevity

Olshansky

2005

Health Affairs

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Is the health of the U.S. population improving or getting worse, and how are health and medical costs influenced by obesity? How will anticipated advances in the biomedical sciences influence life expectancy and the cost of health care? The paper by Dana Goldman and colleagues is a daring speculation on the life-extending effects of possible future technologies-a valuable exercise given the speed of technological advances. Darius Lakdawalla and colleagues provide a methodologically solid basis for concluding that not only does obesity kill, it also takes an alarming toll on health and health care spending at levels that require immediate intervention. W h at w i ll t h e f u t u r e of U.S. health and longevity be? This is a question that scientists, pundits, and authors of science fiction novels have written about for centuries. Given the inevitable demographic wave of population aging now approaching the shoreline, estimating its magnitude and impact on the size of the beneficiary population and health care costs is of critical public policy importance. Papers in this Health Affairs online collection are focused squarely on this topic; here I discuss those by Dana Goldman and colleagues and by Darius Lakdawalla and colleagues.n Goldman and colleagues. The paper by Goldman and colleagues is an economist's view of how to model the future hazards of death and the financial costs of efforts to keep people alive using hypothetical technologies not yet in existence. 1 Think about this for a moment: This is not an easy exercise. First one has to come up with a list of technologies that do not yet exist but that might, and then one must estimate the impact these nonexistent technologies could have on the health and risk of death of today's younger generation when they are old enough to use them. To make such estimates, one has to pile one assumption upon another until what looks like a house of cards has been constructed. Is the result worth the risk of constructing such fragile models? In this case, I would have to say that it is.It is important to remember that this paper was not written as a projection model intended as a serious attempt to predict the future, but rather as a way to estimate the effect of hypothetical life-extending technologies on death rates and health care costs. If this were a genuine attempt to forecast the future, then the model and assumptions would have had to be extended to include other forces that could simultaneously increase the risk of death, such W 5 -R 8 6 2 6 S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 5 P e r s p e c t i v e s

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“…From age seventy onward, Medicare spends 35 percent more on an obese beneficiary than on one of normal weight, largely because of higher disease prevalence among the obese. 22,23 To improve the health profile of entering Medicare beneficiaries and, in doing so, bend the program's cost curve, the pilot programs that prove successful should be replicated and expanded rapidly.…”

Section: Spanning the Prevention Continuummentioning

confidence: 99%

analysis & commentary The Foundation That Health Reform Lays For Improved Payment, Care Coordination, And Prevention

Thorpe

Ogden

2010

Health Affairs

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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act represents a major opportunity to achieve several key goals at once: improving disease prevention; reforming care delivery; and bending the cost curve of health spending while also realizing greater value for the dollars spent. Reformbased initiatives could produce major gains in a relatively short time. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should develop an action plan detailing how the programs that the health reform law sets into motion throughout various agencies can work synergistically. It should also detail how best practices in finance and payment, in the organization and delivery of care, and in prevention can be expanded nationally.

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The Health And Cost Consequences Of Obesity Among The Future Elderly

Cited by 140 publications

References 19 publications

Losing ground at midlife in America

Losing ground at midlife in America

Projecting The Future Of U.S. Health And Longevity

analysis & commentary The Foundation That Health Reform Lays For Improved Payment, Care Coordination, And Prevention

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