What obesity and palliative care reveal about the economies of health and healthcare
Should interventions aimed at improving health and alleviating suffering not be valued equally?
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AT FIRST glance, the two fields of obesity and palliative care seem worlds apart. One is associated with lifestyle and excess, the other with decline and end-of-life.
Yet, to a health economist, they share surprising similarities that reveal how society values – and often misprices – health and healthcare.
Neither obesity nor palliative care is a well-defined concept. Obesity is often measured based on body mass index (BMI) – a ratio of weight to height, with specific cut-off points for what defines normal weight, overweight and obese, which interestingly vary by race but not gender. Although reasonable as a screening tool, BMI is an imperfect measure that does not distinguish between fat and muscle mass.
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