American Morning

The real cost of obesity?

With all the talk these days about health care reform – a trillion dollars to insure every American – we wondered, could the total cost be lowered if we as a nation spent a little time and energy on prevention?

Take obesity: medical spending on obesity-related conditions has skyrocketed to 147 billion dollars a year. That's nearly 10 percent of all medical spending in the United States. And that's just the beginning.