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Obesity increases cost of care by $8,000 per patient in VA study

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US veterans with a BMI of at least 40 were estimated to cost Veterans Affairs $8,138 more than their normal-weight counterparts during 10 years of medical treatment, according to study findings presented at Obesity Week 2013.

“This is the first study to examine health care costs attributable to obesity over a period longer than 4 years,” Matthew Maciejewski, PhD, of the Durham VA Medical Center and Duke University Department of Medicine, said in a press release. “Because we had such a large sample size, we were able to examine VA costs separately for veterans in clinically meaningful subclasses of obesity.”

The retrospective cohort study included 263,568 veterans with 2,093,268 person-year observations from 2002 to 2011. Overweight veterans were classified as class I (30-34.9 BMI), class II (35-39.9 BMI) and class III (≥40 BMI). The researchers estimated VA expenditures using mixed models and adjusting for age, sex, race, marital status and co-pay status.

When compared with normal-weight (<25 BMI) veterans, care for veterans in class III cost $635 more in 2002 and $3,307 more in 2011, for a total of $18,013 during the 10 years, according to the abstract.

Veterans in class III also had the highest risk for comorbidities such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, heart disease and arthritis, according to the press release.

“Researchers often make the tie between obesity, poor health and higher health care costs,” Emily Dhurandhar, PhD, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in the release. “This study is unique because it illustrates the extent of this increase among a large cohort of veterans. The dramatic increase in health care costs over the 10-year period clearly demonstrates the need for effective obesity prevention and treatment measures.”

For more information:

Maciejewski M. Abstract T-13-OR. Presented at: Obesity Week; Nov. 11-15, 2013; Atlanta.

Disclosure: One of the researchers reported employment with ViiV Healthcare.