Jump to full article: North Bay (Ont) Nugget (ca), 2008-02-05
Intro: Perhaps this is your classic good news-bad news scenario. First the bad news - being an overweight smoker will likely kill you earlier than most. (Actually that's not really news).
Now the good news - you are not as big a drain on the health-care system as your healthy peers who live longer, a new study says.
A Dutch study concludes preventing obesity and getting people to stop smoking will indeed save lives, but it won't save money.
In what can only be viewed as obtuse irony, the study says it costs more to care for healthy people who live, on average, years longer. This, of course, counters the widely held perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars. . . .
Obviously it can cost less to care for unhealthy people simply because they die sooner. Seems like the ultimate irony - being alive costs more than being dead.
Still, it beats the alternative.
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