As you get higher on the weight scale, you get more absenteeism, more sick days. The disturbing thing about the recent data is that [obesity is] starting at ever-younger ages, which means you're going to have a longer lifetime of diseases and costs associated with it. |
I think if we could get obesity treatments to a situation like cholesterol where there are several different products, where one or two in combination might be successful, at least that would arm physicians with more than they have now. |
It definitely costs an overweight person more. |
Most occupations today require very little physical activity. It used to be that that's where people would burn a lot of their calories. |
Our technology has driven us to develop more and more labor saving devices and, with that, a lot more entertainment devices ? televisions, video games, DVD players. You create even a very small excess number of calories a day, say 10 extra calories, that's the equivalent over the year to a pound. |
The health system in general has largely ignored paying for weight-loss interventions up to this point. This is going to help them reconsider that. |
This is very positive for millions of Americans. |
We have millions of consumers who need assistance to better manage their weight. |
We've been waiting to see how they responded to the surgical side. This will give us a cue as to where to go next. I think we'll start seeing Medicare start looking at other interventions. |
What programs there are, are pitiful when one compares the scale of this epidemic to the resources committed by the federal government. |