Interesting Fact # 730 - Health

powered by ODEO

According to the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and Environment, healthy people are actually a greater burden on the state, than overweight people or heavy smokers, because they live longer and oblige the taxpayer to deal with the cost of "lingering diseases of old age like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s".

(They found that while "a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 over their lifetime", a smoker clocks up just £165,000 and the obese run up an average £187,000 bill before they shuffle off this mortal coil. Well i'm still going to go to the gym, and I'm not going to take up smoking. Sorry.)