NY Health Insurance for Obesity

Obesity has become a serious health concern across America. In fact, obesity comes second to tobacco as the leading preventable cause of death. It is a serious threat because overweight and obesity leads to other serious diseases that will shorten the younger generation’s lifespan such as high cholesterol, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, High blood pressure, Asthma and cancer. When you are overweight or obese, it it very important that you have an affordable health insurance. It’s a good thing that NY health insurance is community-rated. The premium rate  doesn’t discriminate against gender, age or health condition.

Obesity is not limited to adults. In fact one-third of New York’s children and adolescents are obese and the number of obese children (below 19 years-old) have doubled in the past 3 decades. It is even considered an epidemic.

Obesity is said to be the easiest to recognize but the hardest to treat. It requires a major change in your lifestyle and diet and it takes perseverance to see actual results. Obesity is caused when the calories consumed outweighs the calories burned. The imbalance happens when we eat food high in calories and fat and we do not have enough physical activities to burn the excessive calories. Apart from poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle, genetics also play a role. If one of the child’s parent is obese, there is a 50% chance that the child will also become obese. But if both parents are obese, the child has 80% chance of also becoming obese.
Consumption of sugar-rich beverages is also deemed to be one of the leading culprits. NY government has thought about implementing tax on sugared beverages to hopefully reduce consumption.

Overweight and obesity-related diseases has become very expensive. Approximately $7.6 billion annually are spent for the New York health insurance and medical costs of these diseases.

The New York State Department of Health launched the New York State Strategic Plan for Overweight and Obesity Prevention. Their mission is to decrease the prevalence of overweight and obesity, and to reduce the burden of obesity-related diseases by improving healthy eating and increasing physical activity and thus reduce medical and insurance costs. They work according to ten goals:

1. Increase the awareness of overweight and obesity as a major public health threat.
2. Increase early recognition of overweight and/or excessive weight gain.
3. Improve management (medical and non-medical) of people who are overweight or obese and those with obesity-related diseases.
4. Increase initiation, exclusivity and duration of breastfeeding during infancy.
5. Improve lifelong healthy eating.
6. Increase lifelong physical activity.
7. Decrease exposure to television and other recreational screen time.
8. Increase policy and environmental supports for physical activity and healthy eating, including breastfeeding.
9. Increase and maintain effective public health responses to the obesity epidemic in NYS.
10. Expand surveillance and program evaluation to prevent overweight and obesity.