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Last week, the New York Times reported on an August article from the Journal of the American Heart Association which demonstrated that those who exercised 30 minutes at least 5 days a week had dramatically lower medical claims costs than those who did not.
From the article:
For people still struggling to make time for exercise, a new study offers a strong incentive: You’ll save $2,500 a year.
The savings, a result of reduced medical costs, don’t require much effort to accrue — just 30 minutes of walking five days a week is enough.
The researchers used the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – a federal database that collects a huge trove of questionnaire data AND medical claims on almost 40,000 Americans – so there is no better resource. (The researchers only looked at adults and those who did not have VERY low BMI as some of those had cachexia caused by cancer – so they had over 26,000 individuals in their data set.)
The actual results are more nuanced. Those who exercise regularly are different in many other ways than their exercise. They are
- Younger (which lowers costs independent of exercise)
- More male (lower costs in all age groups)
- Healthier (less existing heart disease and diabetes and other disease)
- Less obese
- Fewer cardiac risk factors
- Better self-reported health status
- Higher income
- More likely to be privately insured
So it’s not surprising that the unadjusted cost differential for those who exercise is large.
What’s really exciting here is that after demographic adjustment (second set of bars) and adjustment for comorbidities (third set of bars) – the adjusted cost of exercisers is still substantially lower ($714. A lot less than $2500 – but still a real difference)
In this huge database – all those torn ACLs, bike accidents and finger x-rays don’t overcome the medical claims cost advantage of exercising. We know there are huge physical and psychological advantages to regular exercise. This article shows that it's likely there are financial benefits as well.
The Times article also referenced a Lancet article from this summer- showing that the global excess health care cost associated with sedentary lifestyles is $54 billion. This number is in some ways smaller than I would have expected - it's less than 0.1% of global GDP ($74 trillion). The economic losses from the illness associated with sedentary lifestyle is substantially higher.
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