Costs expanding with American waistlines

U.S. hospitals are ripping out wall-mounted toilets and replacing them with floor models to better support obese patients. The Federal Transit Administration wants buses to be tested for the impact of heavier riders on steering and braking. Cars are burning nearly a billion gallons of gasoline more a year than if passengers weighed what they did in 1960.

Businesses, governments and individuals are only now coming to grips with the everyday costs of the extra pounds, many of which are even greater than believed only a few years ago: The additional annual medical spending because of obesity -- $190 billion -- is double previous estimates and exceeds even those of smoking, a new study shows. Everyone is paying higher health insurance premiums to cover those extra medical costs.

Other changes, often cost-neutral, are coming to the built environment in the form of wider seats in public places from sports stadiums to bus stops.

The startling economic costs of obesity borne by everyone could become the epidemic's secondhand smoke. Only when scientists discovered that nonsmokers were developing lung cancer and other diseases from breathing smoke-filled air did policymakers get serious about fighting the habit, in particular by establishing nonsmoking zones. The costs that smoking added to Medicaid also spurred action.

Now, as economists put a price tag on sky-high body mass indexes, policymakers as well as the private sector are mobilizing to find solutions to the obesity epidemic.

"As committee chairmen, cabinet secretaries, the head of Medicare and health officials see these really high costs, they are more interested in knowing, 'What policy knob can I turn to stop this hemorrhage?' " said Michael O'Grady of the National Opinion Research Center, co-author of a new report for the Campaign to End Obesity.