Bold Experiment: Let’s bribe West Virginia to reduce the percentage of obesity – statistics

For many, it seems that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., advocates positions that contradict scientific orthodoxy, but there is one area in which he and his critics largely agree: a healthier nutrition leads to a healthier population. Obesity, for example, is a major and expensive health problem that only gets worse. Excess body fat and obesity are associated with type 2 diabetes, coronary disease and hypertension, among other diseases. One study found that about 90% of adults with type 2 diabetes were either overweight or obesity. In 2022, the United States spent more than $ 300 billion on medical attention for those with type 2 diabetes, which is about 7% of the total amount that the country spends on healthcare annually. However, it is more evident that the 2020 report from the Institute of Milk, which reports that the annual price of obesity in the United States exceeds $ 1.4 trillion, or about 34% of $ 4.1 billion spent in the United States for the United States for Health in 2020

Americans have been paying for an unhealthy lifestyle for other people for a long time – they first drink alcohol, then smoke cigarettes and now eat foods high in sugar. With the affordable care Act, the amount, which carefully pays obese is increasing. Magnitud ordering more money is spent on obesity diseases than all frauds in our healthcare system.

If it were France or Japan, the central government would dictate that everyone should be thin and hurt, everyone would be thin. This happened in France more than 100 years ago through government policies requiring new mothers to take portion control courses and programs that have greatly discouraged eating between eating or allowing children to eat only their meals.

French experience, with his heavy dependency on centralized control (“If Paris says he is good, he must be good and must obey”), he is unlikely to work in this country. We are at a loss to understand what will work and what to do for something that everyone admits is a national problem with a considerable price. Kennedy’s idea of ​​prohibiting the purchase of sugar soft drinks with food stamps is a small step in the right direction. But we do not know what else would work and will be sustainable.

To find out, I have an unusual proposal that would require modest legislation: Ask one of the largest countries to participate in a huge carrot survey at the end. I like to think about it as a child with a left program behind.

The state with the highest percentage of obesity is currently Western Virginia. In 2023, about four out of every 10 Western Virginians were obese, and more than two -thirds of the country’s population was overweight. Many other countries are very close to West Virginia in terms of obesity.

According to the proposal, if West Virginia can reduce the percentage of obesity to less than 25% (the percentage in Colorado and Hawai The state should not pay an individual federal income tax for up to five years, provided that the percentage of obesity remains below 25%.

This proposal has a number of virtues.

First, Western Virginians are likely to try to use different strategies to achieve the goal of 25% – some will work and others will not. The rest of the country will learn from the experience of West Virginia.

Second, the experiment, whether successful or not, would not cost much. About 47% of Western Virginians receive their health care via Medicare or Medicaid. The federal government pays about $ 4 billion in Medicaid payments to Western Virginians a year and another $ 7 billion for Western Medicare Virginians. In this way, the government pays about twice as much as Medicare and Medicaid in West Virginia (about $ 11 billion a year) than Western Virginians pay in the federal income tax (about $ 5 billion in 2023).

The transformation of thick West Virgina into fresh, would drastically reduce these costs for Medicare and Medicaid and improve corporate performance within the country leading to more large corporate tax revenue. In 2021, according to KFFs, annual healthcare costs made from obese or overweight private insurance were $ 12,588 compared to $ 4,699 for someone who was not overweight.

Thus, excess weight costs nearly $ 8,000 a year per person; The average Western Virginia family pays approximately $ 6,850 a federal income tax. If a person assumes that the private country’s differential approaches the experience of Medicare and Medicaid, then if one person in a family of two must stop being obese or overweight, savings of $ 8,000 would be more than compensation of $ 6,850 loss For a federal income tax for this family. However, not every family has a member of obesity and not every family has a member of Medicare or Medicaid, but with obesity and overweight speeds over 66%, the average family of two has 1.32 persons who are overweight and around 0.47 chance that this person is covered by either Medicare or Medicaid. Direct health savings for the federal government alone will be about $ 3,700 for a family of two equal or about 55% of the loss of federal income taxes. This does not take into account the savings of insurance on the basis of employers or subsidized insurance under the Act on Accessible Care Act.

In addition to improving health, the proposed program will provide Western Virginians with an economic incentive to reduce their weight. American ingenuity is in its peak when it avoids federal income tax. This proposal uses this ingenuity, allowing others to learn from the experience of West Virginia.

Robert P. Charrow was the Chief Council of the Ministry of Health and Human Services of the United States during the first Trump administration.