AMA Backs Disease Classification For Obesity
The American
Medical Association today officially endorsed
recognizing obesity as a disease, a move member physicians hope will
spur better reimbursement for treating overweight Americans and create better
health outcomes.
Doctors,
meeting in Chicago for the AMA’s annual meeting, said such an endorsement would
lead to greater investments and potentially health insurance coverage
specifically for a diagnosis that someone is obese when there is a payment
mechanism for evaluating and managing obesity.
By an
overwhelming vote of the AMA’s policy-making House of Delegates, the group
voted in favor of a resolution to “recognize obesity as a
disease state with multiple pathophysiology aspects requiring a range of
interventions to advance obesity treatment and prevention.”
Though today’s
action by AMA delegates has no legal authority, its policy stances in the past
have been used by policymakers in Washington
and in state capitols across the country when medical policy and health
regulations are debated and made.
The vote was
not without opposition, however, as doctors worried some patients considered
obese by various measures such as BMI may “otherwise be fit and healthy” and
not need aggressive treatment.
“BMI is a very
imperfect measure,” said Dr. Robert Gilchick, an AMA delegate who is also
director of Child and Adolescent Health
Program and Policy with the Los
Angeles County Department of Public Health and chaired the AMA’s Council on
Science and Public Health, which issued a 14-page report for the delegates to consider.
The council, which wrote the report and heard debate on the obesity-as-disease
recommendation, opposed the resolution and urged the AMA against endorsing
obesity as a disease.
In the report, the council
offered its membership pros and cons of classifying obesity as a disease.
On the proponent side, the report said obesity is “similar to other diseases .
. . (such as) hypertension, diabetes, lung cancer that result from a
combination of genetics and environmental factors.
Yet opponents
to classifying obesity as a disease state say “obesity results from personal
choices to overeat or live a sedentary lifestyle.” Therefore, opponents say
obesity is not an illness, the council on science and public health said.
Some worry that
classifying obesity as a disease would lead unnecessarily to a spike in health
care costs and not necessarily improve patient outcomes.
Employers and
insurance companies say the current reimbursement structure for obesity as a
condition is adequate and those who pay for health care have increasingly added
new benefits to address the obesity epidemic.
“We understand
obesity as a condition and a risk factor for other diseases,” said Susan
Pisano, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, which includes the
nation’s largest health plans, UnitedHealth
Group UNH -1.42%
(UNH), Aetna AET 0% (AET), Cigna (CI),
Humana (HUM) and many Blue Cross plans among its membership in an interview
with Forbes before this week’s AMA meeting.
“The important
thing is to get programs and supports in place to address it, as health plans
have done and are doing,” Pisano added.
MORE IN: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2013/06/18/ama-backs-disease-classification-for-obesity/
