Top-line findings from an Obesity Canada report reveal that the cost of inaction in treating obesity in Canada has reached $27.6 billion – about 20 per cent higher than previously estimated. With nearly one in three Canadians living with obesity, both the direct and indirect costs are staggering and illustrate that living with this disease has profound implications that go beyond the individual.
The findings from Modeling the Cost of Inaction in Treating Obesity in Canada highlight how a national failure to recognize obesity as a chronic and progressive disease and a lack of access to effective interventions has resulted in substantial economic implications across Canada.
The report found the incremental annual cost on Canada’s healthcare system due to obesity was $5.9 billion, associated with 19 million more physician visits among other care and support needs.1 Beyond direct healthcare implications, workplace productivity costs were more than three times higher, reaching an estimated $21.7 billion due to increased absenteeism and presenteeism, reduced productivity, and lower workforce participation, among other causes.
This financial burden extends to a loss in government revenues as well. Premature deaths, reduced workforce participation, and lower incomes translate to a $5.1 billion loss in income, sales, and business tax revenues. In addition to the impacts on the economy, the report also noted that women in the workforce are disproportionately affected by obesity.
“This report should be a collective wake-up call when it comes to how we view, treat and prevent obesity. It’s time to see it for what it is – a complex disease that requires comprehensive chronic disease management,” says Ian Patton, one of the report’s authors and Director of Advocacy and Public Engagement at Obesity Canada. “Obesity is associated with more than 200 downstream health conditions including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and many cancers, and is the result of a combination of genetic, environmental, biological, behavioural and social factors – not simply a lack of willpower. We know what to do, we have globally recognized gold-standard Clinical Practice Guidelines, yet we are not implementing them effectively.”
Currently, Canada’s healthcare system does not have the adequate interdisciplinary supports for obesity management, despite their recognized benefits within treatment guidelines. Furthermore, less than 20 per cent of the Canadian population with private drug benefit plans have access to medications approved by Health Canada for obesity treatment, and patients referred to bariatric surgery can wait up to eight years before meeting a specialist or receiving the surgery.
“Public health policies that strive to prevent chronic medical conditions and ensure access to healthcare should be the expectation of all Canadians,” says Dr. Sean Wharton, internal medicine physician and weight management specialist. “Obesity is no different. If we invest in interventions far earlier in the disease process, we can disrupt disease progression and the well-documented cascade of its ill-effects that go far beyond the excess use of healthcare resources.”
The Canadian Medical Association and the World Health Organization consider obesity as a chronic disease that requires health systems to prevent and treat it as they do other chronic diseases, yet no province or territory officially recognizes obesity as a chronic disease.
“As a society, we have to stop perpetuating the myth that obesity is about a big person with an unhealthy love for food or unwillingness to exercise. We need to see obesity through a lens that goes beyond body mass index (BMI) and dismantle the widespread weight-bias and weight-based discrimination that accompanies this mindset,” says Lisa Schaffer, Executive Director at Obesity Canada. “These report findings reinforce that when we change our mindset, we lay the foundation that obesity is a chronic disease that requires the type of health interventions and treatments given to any other chronic diseases.”
Obesity Canada is calling for urgent action. Investing in effective obesity treatment and prevention strategies is not only the right thing to do for Canadians living with the disease, but is crucial for the economic well-being of Canada.
Additional Findings
- Canada’s already stretched long-term care system saw over 10,000 seniors enter long-term care due to obesity-related diseases in 2023 alone, at a cost of $639 million.
- 45% of adults living with obesity, and an associated disability, did not work in the last year, potentially costing the Canadian Pension Plan millions annually.
- Over the past decade, obesity-related deaths have prematurely taken an estimated 45,200 individuals from the workforce, resulting in nearly $2 billion potential lost wages.
- Women living with obesity earned 4% less annually than healthy-weight women, resulting in nearly $3.8 billion in lost income.
- Women living with obesity are also 5.3% less likely to be employed compared to healthy-weight women. This disparity is far less pronounced for men, at only 0.3%
