Health Affairs

Health Affairs, 28, no. 4 (2009): w751-w760 (Published online 9 July 2009) doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.28.4.w751 © 2009 by Project HOPE	New Online   Getting Health Reform Done   After the State of the Union   Incremental Reform   E-Health in Developing World   Most-Read Articles in 2009

This Article Figures Only Full Text (HTML) Reprint (PDF) Appendix Submit a response to this article Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when Comments are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to My Personal Archive Download to Citation Manager Reprints & Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Trasande, L. Articles by Weitzman, M. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Trasande, L. Articles by Weitzman, M. Related Collections Hospitals Maternal And Child Health Chronic Care Health Spending Consumer Issues

Web Exclusives

TRENDS

Effects Of Childhood Obesity On Hospital Care And Costs, 1999–2005

Leonardo Trasande, Yinghua Liu, George Fryer and Michael Weitzman

Childhood obesity is increasingly recognized as an epidemic, but the economic consequences have not been well quantified. We evaluated trends in obesity-associated hospitalizations, charges, and costs using 1999–2005 data from a nationally representative sample of admissions to U.S. hospitals. We detected a near-doubling in hospitalizations with a diagnosis of obesity between 1999 and 2005 and an increase in costs from $125.9 million to 237.6 million (in 2005 dollars) between 2001 and 2005. Medicaid appears to bear a large burden of hospitalizations for conditions that occur along with obesity, while private payers pay a greater portion of hospitalization costs to treat obesity itself.

                      What's this?