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30 Jul, 2009 01:10

Obesity bites off Obama’s healthcare plan

While policy makers in Washington are working on a new plan to rebuild the U.S. healthcare system, the obesity problem and the cost of treating related illnesses is somehow missing from their hefty thousand-page report.

New research, recently published by Health Affairs Journal, say its not a good time to be fat in America because obesity-related health spending has reached a whopping $147 billion a year, and that was back in 2006 and was roughly two times more (from $74 billion) than eight years before. And the number of obese people in the US is growing, as well.

Former president Bill Clinton addressed fellow countrymen by saying that this is America’s number one health concern. Possibly, this is America’s first generation in over 200 years that is going to live shorter lives than their parents because of the quality of food consumed that has artificial additives.

The report comes just when Barack Obama is trying to save his healthcare plan and have it approved by Congress.

A science writer and contributor to Politics Daily news magazine, Ria Misra, believes that the problem of obesity should be folded into the healthcare programme debate.

“We need to be looking into the obesity problem in children as kind of a long-term goal. The sooner we get he problem under control for children – the more we are going to see obesity reduced,” says Misra.

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