A heavy burden

This month’s decision by the Medicare program to begin paying for obesity treatments has prompted complaints the government is forcing thin people to subsidize fat people. But the winners and losers from this policy shift are not as obvious as they might seem.

To begin with, the government says two-thirds of us are overweight, so this is not so much the thin subsidizing the fat as the fat subsidizing the obese. And if all the taxpayer-financed surgeries, diet programs and counseling actually work (a big if) the upshot could be lower taxpayer costs.

A study published last year in the journal Health Affairs estimated the health-care costs associated with excessive weight amount to something like $93 billion a year, half of it covered by Medicare and Medicaid. On average, medical treatments cost $732 more per year for the obese and $247 more for the merely overweight.

The increased Medicare and Medicaid costs were statistically significant only for the obese — a fact that widens the divide between plump and corpulent. If the big expenses don’t kick in until you get really fat, I guess even the overweight have a right to object when their fellow Americans eat too much.

So maybe it’s not so strange for George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, a promoter of fast food lawsuits, to complain “obese patients are contributing to skyrocketing Medicare and Medicaid outlays and costing thin taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year.” Though Mr. Banzhaf is tubby, perhaps he’s not fat enough to be a drain on the Treasury.

For those who are, spending money on weight loss now could, in theory, avoid bigger costs down the road — money that would be spent to treat diabetes, heart disease or other obesity-related illnesses. That’s the fiscal justification for covering obesity treatments under taxpayer-financed health insurance (although it makes more sense with the younger population covered by Medicaid than retirees under Medicare).

But there’s a complication. We don’t really know if taxpayer costs are higher, on balance, than if everyone were thin.

In the case of smokers, economic analyses indicate taxpayer savings from less health care in old age and fewer Social Security payments (because of shorter life expectancies) outweigh the costs of treating tobacco-related diseases. Something similar could be true of obesity.

University of Chicago economist Tomas Philipson, whose work on weight trends is widely cited, says, “It’s not clear whether obese people are costing us more or costing us less.” In all likelihood, however, we don’t have to worry that subsidizing weight loss will inadvertently raise taxpayer costs by making people thinner and thereby extending their lives, because obesity treatments are notoriously ineffective.

Taxpayers may not benefit from Medicare’s new policy, but Mr. Banzhaf cites one group he thinks will: trial lawyers. “If obesity is thought of as a disease related to eating like anorexia or bulimia, it is something at least in part beyond the ’personal responsibility’ and ’free will’ of the individual,” Mr. Banzhaf said in a recent press release. “Therefore, a plaintiff’s tendency to overeat is not a complete defense to an obesity lawsuit.”

Even if the government starts to treat being overweight as a disease, it does not mean the behavior that makes people overweight is a disease as well. Gonorrhea is a disease, but promiscuous, unprotected sex is not.

Still, I suspect Mr. Banzhaf is right that such subtleties will be lost in the emerging debate about what Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson calls “a critical public health problem.” Smoking, once seen as a behavior that raises the risk of disease, is now routinely described as a disease in itself.

Such language, like Medicare’s new generosity on weight loss expenses, seems to indicate a sympathetic attitude toward the afflicted, but the example of smoking suggests otherwise. Having identified smoking as a “public health” problem, the government proceeded to hector, vilify, tax and confine smokers for their own good.

A bill recently approved by the Senate illustrates the absurd extremes to which such paternalistic arrogance can lead: It authorizes the Food and Drug Administration to prevent smokers from buying demonstrably safer tobacco products if it decides they might otherwise give up tobacco altogether.

The lesson overeaters should learn from smokers is you can’t surrender responsibility without giving up freedom.

Jacob Sullum, a nationally syndicated columnist, is the author of “Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.”