Obese Pay More For Life Insurance; Why Not For Health Insurance?

WASHINGTON - EntSun -- As the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/buyside/personal-finance/li...) recently reminded us, people pay much higher rates for life insurance if they are obese. . . .

Yet, although being obese has a similar if not much greater impact on medical costs than on life expectancy, obese people do not pay a penny more for their health insurance.

This is grossly unfair to the majority of adult Americans who are not obese but who are forced to pay much higher premiums to cover the grossly inflated costs of medical care for the minority who are obese, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf who helped persuade Congress to include a 50% surcharge on smokers under Obamacare. . . .

Especially now when there are so many drugs which can help obese people lose weight, perhaps it is time for Congress to no longer prohibit health insurance companies from charging fair rates which reflect the well documented and vastly higher medical care costs the obese people now require the non-obese to subsidize, argues Banzhaf. . . .

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It's exactly what the National Association of Insurance Commissioners [NAIC] recommended many years ago, notes Banzhaf, who helped persuade the health commissioners of the many states to make this recommendation.

He says it's both fair and reasonable because weight-loss drugs are widely available, it costs nothing for people to start eating less, and we routinely charge smokers and older folks much higher rates even though they - unlike the obese - can't do anything to lower their premiums. . . .

Another study (https://www.fightchronicdisease.org/post/america-has-both-an-obesity-and-health-care-cost-problem)  showed that if weight loss drugs - or simply consuming fewer calories - helped each obese American to reduce their Body Mass Index [BMI] by only a very modest 5%, the cumulative effect would save $68.1 billion in private health insurance spending annually, and $21.7 billion in Medicare.

More to the point, a 10% BMI reduction - the figure used to calculate the "Big Savings" to airlines (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-15/weight-loss-drugs-hold-promise-of-big-savings-for-us-airlines) from reductions in average passenger weight from the widespread use of weight-loss drugs - would save $128.3 billion in private insurance, and $41.6 billion in Medicare.

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To put that enormous saving in context, the U.S. recently suffered a major government shutdown over funding ACA subsidies ("Obamacare subsidies" or "enhanced premium tax credits") in an amount estimated to cost taxpayers ~$23–30 billion annually; so a 5% BMI reduction, just among the obese, would have covered most of that cost, and the billions saved by a 10% BMI reduction would easily exceed the total amount of the subsidies.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf