Objective: The primary goal of the study was to quantify health care costs of truckers across categories of normal weight, overweight, and obese.
Methods: Health care claims data from a transportation logistics company were obtained from 2004 to 2005 and were merged with body mass index measures. A robust multivariate ordinary least squares regression model was used to adjust for demographic and occupational variables.
Results: Two thousand eight hundred forty-nine truckers had a mean annual total health care cost of $1785. Unadjusted trimmed total cost for overweight subjects ($1613) and obese subjects ($1792) were significantly higher than for normal weight subjects ($1012; P < 0.05). After multivariate adjustment, obese and overweight subjects had on average, $591 (P = 0.031) and $383 (P = 0.188) higher total trimmed health care cost than normal weight subjects.
Conclusion: Both overweight and obese individuals had higher health care costs and higher prevalence of hyperlipidemia, diabetes, and hypertension than their normal weight counterparts.