[Wookie]

Originally Posted by DESS

Pardon me for being skeptical, but do you have any links to support your claim that healthy people cost the system more? It seems outlandish, frankly.

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/per...1549-1676&ct=1
You can search for the pulication yourself

There are a lot of good reasons for people to lose weight and stop smoking — but saving money on lifetime health care costs isn't one of them, according to a study out of the Netherlands.
The researchers found that healthy people cost governments more in the long run because they live years longer: an average of 4.5 years longer than people who are obese, and seven years longer than smokers.
Economist Pieter van Baal, who led the study for the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, talks with Melissa Block about the counter-intuitive idea that a healthy lifestyle costs more in terms of health care.
Van Baal's study, "Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure," was published Monday in the online journal

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.
On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.
Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on.
The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.
The results counter the common perception that preventing obesity will save health systems worldwide millions of dollars.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...thy_peopl.html

Rapidly rising prices for health care also add to the expense of moving big-ticket medical procedures into later years, explains Garson, a cardiologist. "In today's world, where the rate of medical care inflation is twice the rate of regular inflation, anything done 10 years from now is, in real dollars, 25 percent more expensive."
There are two ways to deal with that problem, according to Garson. Get medical costs down, and "keep people as healthy as possible as long as possible so that they don't spend as much money being sick."
The best kind of aging, he says, is to "have early old age last as long as possible and late old age last 15 minutes."
Yes, preventive care is a good thing because a long and healthy life is a good thing. We shouldn't lose sight of that big picture. But let's not deceive ourselves into believing that wellness programs can reduce medical spending over the long haul. That may come off as an attractive selling point for a health-care plan, but it's not so.

http://community.changenow4health.co...-lots-of-money

Medical economists agree that cancer screenings and gym classes can lead to physical well-being and longer lives. But in the interests of honest accounting, they add that prevention does not reduce overall health-care spending. On the contrary.
Let's put it bluntly: Longer lives cost more money. Those who make it to 90 thanks to exercise and six daily servings of vegetables are more likely to suffer the expensive ravages of old age. Everyone dies of something.
So he who avoids a fatal heart attack at 70 is more at risk of cancer at 80. Those extra 10 years can mean extra CT scans, hip replacements and physical therapy, even for those in relative good health.

I'm at work, so don't expect much.