A study in my home country (which aligned with my own back of the napkin estimation) put the additional cost of obesity at around 8% of government expenditure.

A study in my home country (which aligned with my own back of the napkin estimation) put the additional cost of obesity at around 8% of government expenditure. Which given I was giving up over half my salary in taxes (well over half once you count sales taxes), comes out to over two weeks of work exclusively for obese people’s additional medical costs. That’s not too far off the study you linked, which states an average of 1.8% GDP (though I’m not sure that sample of 8 countries is representative of much), which again would be somewhere between 4.5-6% of government expenditure depending on their expenditure to GDP ratios (assuming 30-40% is pretty normal). Perhaps one week of work dedicated exclusively to subsidising obese people excess medical costs every year would be more reasonable for a more typical tax payer. But that’s still a lot. I’m not sure I buy the increased mortality bringing that number down story very much either. Obesity tends to only take about 5-10 years off your life expectancy (depending on how obese…), but it’s going to drive your medical care costs up for your whole life. Obesity kills you a lot slower than cancer does.