In terms of its cost, obesity is perhaps the largest medical problem in America. Finklestein et al. estimate that medical expenditures for treatment of patients who are either overweight or obese accounted for almost 10 percent of all medical expenditures in 1998, at a cost of 92 billion dollars (in 2002 inflation-adjusted dollars).[12] They also estimate that almost half of all Americans are either overweight or obese, with the numbers in each category growing by 70 percent and 12 percent, respectively, during the decade prior to 2003. Sturm estimates that obese adults incur annual medical expenditures that are 36 percent higher than those of normal weight incur.[13]
One might conclude from these statistics that obesity in America is a clear example of a failure of the free market — that undirected consumers, without the protection of a benevolent government agency, have taken to consuming increasingly high-calorie and unhealthy foods, leading to America’s obesity epidemic. However, this specious (yet popular) narrative is contrary to the facts and disregards the crucial role government policy has played in encouraging the production of unhealthy foods supplied to American consumers.
“It is precisely the sort of clinics operated by Walmart that allow consumers — and especially the poorest in society — access to basic, affordable healthcare.”
Recent research has uncovered the baneful influence that corn-based sweeteners have had on America’s obesity epidemic. It is estimated that Americans consume 73 pounds of corn-derived sweetener per person per year,[14] and as Michael Pollan points out, the growth of corn-based sweeteners is a direct result of the government’s farm policy, which subsidizes corn production.[15] A basic consequence of economic law is that when something is subsidized, more of it will be produced. Pollan writes,
Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.
Pollan also correctly notes that the calories from high-fructose corn syrup are unhealthier than those from natural sweeteners such as sugar. Research by Powell et al. concludes that “[r]ats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.”[16] Avena, commenting on their study, said that “[o]ur findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic.”
The obesity epidemic in America has been exacerbated by the abundance and relative cheapness of high-fructose corn syrup. The growth of calories produced, and in particular the abundance of unhealthy calories, is not an outcome of the free market but rather the direct — if perhaps unintended — consequence of government farm policy. As Pollan observes,
Since 1977 an American’s average daily intake of calories has jumped by more than 10 percent…. This was, of course, the same decade that America embraced a cheap-food farm policy…. Since the Nixon administration, farmers in the United States have managed to produce 500 additional calories per person every day.[17]
Only by removing the subsidies available to corn producers, and allowing local and organic farmers to compete on an even playing field, will healthier calories become more economically attractive to consumers.
Read more: What’s Really Wrong with the Healthcare Industry - Vijay Boyapati - Mises Daily http://mises.org/daily/4434#ixzz0p6i4cNtd