HS415 UNIT 3 PROJECT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

HS415 UNIT 3 PROJECT - Essay Example Obesity is a worldwide problem capturing health concern for both developing and developed countries. Obesity is a severe state of overweight, and it is a "global epidemic" according to World health organization figures. More than one billion adults are overweight worldwide, and about 300 million of are clinically obese. Overweight affects more people than hunger and malnutrition. Many researchers have been done to explain the causes of overweight and obesity in human. Although the literature entails a broad variety of such articles, this paper will focus and concentrate to explaining and characterizing the observed patterns of medical care utilization by obese people, the supply and demand economic theory in diagnosis and treatment of obesity and the impact on State funds for Medicaid and Medicare. Obesity is clinically linked to other serious diseases including diabetes type 2, hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, arthritis, liver and gallbladder disease, respiratory disor ders, such as asthma, and certain kinds of cancers (Finkelstein, & Fiebelkorn, 2003). The standard model for health demand and medical care demand is the Grossmans model. In this model, wage-earning persons maximize inter-temporal function of health and commodities. The demand for medical care is obtained from the demand for health. Moreover, the medical care demand depends on age, wage, education, costs of medical goods, and unhealthy habits such as obesity and smoking (Finkelstein, Fiebelkorn, & Wang, 2004). An outstanding implication emanating from Grossman’s model is the fact that unhealthy behaviors, for instance obese or overweight increases medical care demands. It is evident that obesity has a link to diseases such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes type 2 and certain types of cancer. These illnesses require both frequent medical care and frequent hospitalization. However, not all overweight and obese people have health complications. The health