I don't understand how obesity is a drain on 'society,' except through state-financed medical care. I don't suffer anymore because other people are fat. Why should I be able to control what they eat?
Medical costs are almost 20% of US GDP. even if you are in private medical care, you're still subsidizing obese insurance customers in the same risk pool to some extent. Plus you have to factor in the wider economic effects of lost productivity, non-food consumption and so on. For example, most hospitals beds are now expected to accommodate patients weighing 400 lbs., the cost of which is distributed across all patients even though relatively few patients actually weigh that much. Don't have the numbers to hand right now, but when I did a rough estimate of causes vs. costs of mortality it came out something like a 1% drag on GDP from obesity.
> Medical costs are almost 20% of US GDP. even if you are in private medical care, you're still subsidizing obese insurance customers in the same risk pool to some extent.
Not if the risk pool is priced correctly. If it's priced correctly, there are no cross-group subsidies.
> you have to factor in the wider economic effects of lost productivity
Not at all. They're paid less. Surely you're not going to argue that they owe "full productivity"? If so, there are lots of other things that affect productivity, so what makes obesity special?
