Health care costs grow with body mass

Researchers at Duke Medicine report that health care costs increase in parallel with body mass measurements, even beginning at a recommended healthy weight. Pharmacy and medical costs may even double for obese people compared with those at a healthy weight, according to a recent study published in the journal Obesity.

The researchers found that costs associated with medical and drug claims rose gradually with each unit increase in body mass index (BMI). Notably, these increases began above a BMI of 19, which falls in the lower range of the healthy weight category.

"Our findings suggest that excess fat is detrimental at any level," said lead author Truls Østbye, M.D., Ph.D., professor of community and family medicine at Duke and professor of health services and systems research at Duke-National University of Singapore.

A 2013 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, using death data from several large population studies, concluded that while higher degrees of obesity were associated with higher mortality rates, being overweight or even slightly obese was actually linked with lower mortality. Since these findings questioned the general belief that high body mass leads to poor health outcomes, Østbye and his colleagues sought to better understand the rates of obesity-related disease, or morbidity, by measuring health care utilization and costs.