and NBC News
The obesity rate in the United States is high and stable: About four in 10 people are obese and one in 10 are severely obese, according to new federal government research. The overall rate has not changed significantly over the past decade, but the rate of severe obesity is increasing.
The overall rate is around 40%, according to a survey of about 6,000 people conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between 2021 and 2023. Women were nearly twice as likely to report severe obesity.
The overall rate appeared to fall compared with the 2017-2020 survey, but the change is not believed to be statistically significant because the numbers are small enough that there is a mathematical probability that they have not actually declined.
It’s still too early to know whether new weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound can alleviate the epidemic of this chronic disease linked to dozens of health problems, according to Samuel Emmerich, the CDC’s public health officer in charge of the study.
“We can’t look at that granular level of medication use and compare that to changes in obesity prevalence,” he said, “I hope that’s something we can look at in the future.”
Most telling of the study are the results showing that the overall obesity rate has not changed significantly in a decade, even as the rate of severe obesity rose from nearly 8 percent in the 2013-2014 survey to nearly 10 percent in the most recent one. Before that, obesity had been rising rapidly in the United States since the 1990s, federal surveys showed.
Obesity and severe obesity are determined by body mass index, a calculation based on height and weight. People with a BMI of 30 are considered obese; those with a BMI of 40 or higher are severely obese. BMI is considered an imperfect tool, but doctors still use it widely to screen for obesity.
“Seeing increases in severe obesity is even more alarming because that is the level of obesity that is most highly associated with some of the highest levels of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and lowest quality of life,” said Solveig Cunningham, a professor of global health at Emory University.
Cunningham, who was not involved in the new study, said it’s not clear why severe obesity rates are rising, or why they were higher among women. Factors could include the effects of hormones, the impact of motherhood or other causes that require further study, she said.
The new study also found that obesity rates varied by education. Nearly 32% of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher reported being obese, compared with about 45% of people with some college or a high school diploma or less.
The latest report follows the release earlier this month of data from U.S. states and territories showing that in 2023, obesity rates varied widely by location, from a high of more than 41% of adults in West Virginia to a low of less than 24% of adults in Washington, D.C. Rates were highest in the Midwest and South.
Every U.S. state and territory had obesity rates above 20 percent. In 23 states, more than one in three adults was obese, the data showed. Before 2013, no state had such a high rate, said Alyson Goodman, who leads a CDC team focused on population health.
The key is to prevent obesity in the first place, starting in early childhood, Cunningham said. Even when people do develop obesity, preventing additional weight gain should be the goal. “It’s really hard to get obesity reversed at the individual level and at the population level,” she said, “I guess it’s not surprising that we’re not seeing downward changes in obesity prevalence.”
Senate hearing on Ozempic price
Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, chief executive of pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, is due to appear before the Senate Health Committee on Tuesday over the costs of its weight-loss drugs.
Committee chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, has expressed frustration at what Novo Nordisk charges for Ozempic (also used to treat type 2 diabetes) and Wegovy (approved for weight loss).
“We pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. The same drug sold in Canada or Europe costs a fraction of what it costs in the United States,” Sanders said in an interview Monday. “The result of this is that hundreds of thousands of people in this country who desperately need this product will not be able to afford it.”
A previously released commission report showed that the cost of Wegovy is significantly lower in European countries, from $140 a month in Germany to $92 a month in the UK. Americans pay about $1,349 a month for exactly the same drug.
“It is clear that Novo Nordisk is ripping off the American people,” Sanders told NBC News in June.
In a statement Monday, Novo Nordisk defended its pricing: “We appreciate that it is frustrating that every country has its own healthcare system, but making isolated and narrow comparisons ignores a fundamental fact,” it said. “Unfortunately, even when we lower our prices, too often U.S. patients do not receive the savings – this is a problem.”
A February Department of Health report found that in 2022, prices for all drugs in the United States – both brand-name and generic – were nearly three times higher than in other wealthy countries.
The company also said the net price of Ozempic has dropped 40% since it was introduced in the United States. Wegovy is also “following a similar trajectory.” Net price is the amount of money a pharmaceutical company makes from a drug after discounts and rebates.
In an interview with NBC News last month, Jørgensen defended the costs of both drugs, saying they were actually saving taxpayers money by reducing health care costs associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
“If you look at the cost of obesity in the United States, it is a disease that costs Americans over $400 billion a year,” he added. “We are actually providing products that are helping to alleviate that burden.”
Novo Nordisk holds the patent on semaglutide, so other companies cannot make a generic version. This leaves Novo Nordisk, and ultimately Jørgensen, to answer questions about the price of their best-selling drugs.
