With all the focus on the health care reform debate, there has been startlingly little attention to the major cause of rising health care costs in America: obesity.  Our nation currently spends nearly $150 billion per year on costs related to obesity, and another several hundred billion dollars per year on diabetes and heart disease, which are closely linked to obesity and poor nutritional habits.  And yet, relatively little of the health care reform discussion has centered on strategies to deal with the obesity epidemic, and essentially none of the dialogue has addressed the role of the food industry and large agribusiness.

Enter Michael Pollan, best-selling author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food,” whose recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times stated the crucial link between our  health care woes and our food habits with stark clarity. The disconnect between our chronic disease problem and our “food problem” makes sense when one observes, as Pollan does, that “there’s lots of money to be made by selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes.”

But all of that is likely to change under the majority of health care reform scenarios being discussed.  It will change because insurance companies will no longer be able to turn down individuals with diabetes, heart disease or other costly obesity-related chronic diseases for coverage.  Nor are lifetime caps on coverage likely to remain under a new system.  Under our current system, insurance companies are not bearing the true burden of our poor national nutrition habits because nutrition-related chronic diseases tend to occur more frequently in low-income populations – many of whom are currently uninsured.  With health care reform, these populations would be eligible for coverage and costs would skyrocket.

The good news is that hopefully by being forced to immediately pay the true costs of our eating habits, policy makers and  health care leaders will be forced to look closely at the problems inherent in our current system, which rewards both the production and consumption of highly-processed, high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods.