stats on obesity and a likely candidate for health care rationing

Along the lines of what I wrote in a recent essay on health care costs and potential reforms...

Health care rationing is most likely to start with expensive, end-of-life care-- given reasonable considerations about cost, a reductionistic focus on its limited utilitarian benefit, and an overall cultural devaluation of life (albeit with important advances in this realm on abortion).

Another reasonable consideration is who should pay. To note, if it's private insurance, then it's mutually beneficial trade-- when you pay premiums and they pay out benefits. But if the government pays, then we're taking money from some people to keep other people alive. When is that kosher?

Another likely candidate for rationing is "lifestyle choices" such as smoking and obesity. Again, a large part of this is quite reasonable, given that one might give the power to government to make such choices and coercive taxation will fund its choices. And various taxes against lifestyle choices are more politically popular, given an unsavory menu of tax increases and other rationing options.

Here's Lauran Neergaard in the C-J on the latest obesity stats...

Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers. It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and...there's little good news. In 31 states, more than one in four adults are obese, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year, and no state experienced a significant decline....

Health economists once made the harsh financial calculation that the obese would save money by dying sooner. But more recent research instead suggests that better treatments are keeping them alive nearly as long -- but they're much sicker for longer, requiring such costly interventions as knee replacements and diabetes care and dialysis. Medicare spends anywhere from $1,400 to $6,000 more annually on health care for an obese senior than for the non-obese, Levi said....

-Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity, 32.5 percent, for the fifth year in a row. Three additional states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, including Alabama, 31.2 percent; West Virginia, 31.1 percent; and Tennessee, 30.2 percent.

-In 1991, no state had more than a 20 percent obesity rate. Today, the only state that doesn't is Colorado, at 18.9 percent.

-Mississippi also had the highest rate of overweight and obese children, at 44.4 percent in total. It's followed by Arkansas, 37.5 percent; and Georgia, 37.3 percent.