In addition to eating too much and not exercising enough, could having health insurance be a cause of obesity? Obese people tend to suffer more medical problems and so incur higher medical costs. Obese people with health insurance that will reimburse them for only part of their medical bills, or who have no health insurance, must pay some or all of these higher medical bills themselves. People with health insurance that covers most of their medical bills will not suffer as large a monetary cost from being obese. In other words, by reducing some of the costs of obesity, health insurance may give people an economic incentive to gain weight.
At first glance, this argument may seem implausible. Some people suffer from medical conditions that can make physical activity difficult or that can cause weight gain even with moderate eating, so they may become obese, regardless of which type of health insurance they have. The people who are obese because of poor eating habits or lack of exercise probably don’t consider health insurance when deciding whether to have a slice of chocolate cake or to watch Netflix instead of going to the gym. But if economists are correct about the importance of economic incentives, then we would expect that if we hold all other personal characteristics—such as age, gender, and income—constant, people with health insurance will be more likely to be overweight than people without health insurance.
Jay Bhattacharya and Kate Bundorf of Stanford University, Noemi Pace of the University of Venice, and Neeraj Sood of the University of Southern California, have analyzed the effects of health insurance on weight. Using a sample that followed nearly 80,000 people from 1989 to 2004, they found that after controlling for factors including age, gender, income, education, and race, people with health insurance were significantly more likely to be overweight than people without health insurance. Having private health insurance increased BMI by 1.3 points. Having public health insurance, such as Medicaid, which is a program under which the government provides health care to low-income people, increased BMI by 2.3 points. These findings suggest that people respond to economic incentives even when making decisions about what they eat and how much they exercise."
Source: Jay Bhattacharya, Kate Bundorf, Noemi Pace, and Neeraj Sood, “Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?” in Michael Grossman and Naci H. Mocan, eds., Economic Aspects of Obesity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011; and Tara Parker-Pope
Here is another study I found independently coming to the same conclusion:
"Obesity in the United States has been continuing increasing and cited as a major health issue in recent decades. Many researchers have studied its socio-economic cause, but very few studies center on the potential influence that health insurance has on obesity. In our common sense, health insurance reduces the money that we pay for health care and makes many treatments’ cost affordable which we may choose to give up originally due to our financial situation. However, everything has two sides. The benefits from insurance also can lead people to change their choices and behaviors.As an insured, people may take on more health risk than they did without insurance. Insurance reduces people’s responsibility, and reduced responsibility decrease health consciousness.Using 3 years of individual-level data from the Integrated Health Interview Series corresponding to year 2000, 2005 and 2010, I attempt to research if the presence of health insurance has effect on body weight.Then by dividing overall BMI into detailed group, Istudy further on if health insurance affects overweight and obesity. The 2SLS result shows insurance is positively related with BMI, so insured individuals tend to be heavier than those non-insured. What’s more, the presence of health insurance affects obesity much more than overweight. People with health insurance have a higher probability to be obese."
Have you considered that obesity might lead to health insurance instead? Fatter people tend to have more health problems, necessitating health insurance more.
Did any of those studies study a group of people over a period of time after first becoming insured and noting weight gain, or did they just notice a correlation?
Seems like a classic example of conflating correlation and causation.
What happens to those figures when done in a country with a universal healthcare option?
Based on the quick checks I did with the G20 countries, countries with universal healthcare options were anywhere from slightly to far more likely to be less obese than their non-universal healthcare having countries.
I controlled for age, education, income, gender, and race. Hilariously, the differences were so stark that I didn't need to do that.
Conslusion: since my sample size is thousands of times larger than that poorly done study and I didn't conflate correlation and causation, we are far more likely to prevent obesity and healthcare issues with a universal healthcare solution. More specifically, health insurance lowers obesity.
The day I first got car insurance I was immediately incentivized to drive my car into a brick wall.
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KMC Community Forums
Jul 2nd, 2019 02:39 AM
tbh
