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Speaker 1: Together do the clan right. We're gov. It's on the

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Speaker 1: shelves from today. You can get yourself skinny like Oprah

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Speaker 1: if you want to, but it will cost you. I'll

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Speaker 1: set you back five hundred bucks a month. Now, that

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Speaker 1: of course is unaffordable for most people, so it's prompted

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Speaker 1: a debate over whether the government should fund it for

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Speaker 1: you in a bid to reduce obesity and actually save

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Speaker 1: money on obesity related illnesses and injuries later on. Now,

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Speaker 1: on principle, this is the kind of thing I'm a

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Speaker 1: big fan of. I love putting money up front, a

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Speaker 1: little bit of money upfront in order to save lots

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Speaker 1: of money later on. But unfortunately, as it stands, this

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be an example of saving money. If you were

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Speaker 1: funding wegov like they do in the UK, you'd fund

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Speaker 1: it for people with a BMI over thirty. Now, in

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Speaker 1: New Zealand, that's a lot of people. It's one point

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Speaker 1: five million adults apparently. Now, if every one of those

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Speaker 1: adults cost five hundred, five hundred dollars a month, that's

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Speaker 1: six thousand dollars a year. That would cost the country

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Speaker 1: seven and a half billion dollars a year. But it

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Speaker 1: would only save two billion dollars a year in obesity

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Speaker 1: related healthcare costs. Now, to be fair, that is only

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Speaker 1: measuring health cost related to obesity. As you know, of course,

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Speaker 1: there are other costs. If you carry too much weight,

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Speaker 1: makes you prone to illness, which makes you take days

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Speaker 1: off work, makes you less productive. So you could also

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Speaker 1: measure the lost cost of productivity across the workforce. Now

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Speaker 1: that's about eight billion dollars. So add that to the

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Speaker 1: cost of healthcare, you've now got let's say nine and

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Speaker 1: a half billion dollars or thereabouts that you would be saving.

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Speaker 1: But measuring productivity is a guessing game, right, So you're

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Speaker 1: paying seven point five billion dollars to maybe save nine

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Speaker 1: point five billion dollars, which I don't think is enough

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Speaker 1: of a saving to take a punt on, do you.

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Speaker 1: Then you have to factor in that for a lot

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Speaker 1: of people would go the only works when you're on it.

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Speaker 1: The minute that you're off it, you start putting the

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Speaker 1: weight back on. Within a year, you've got it all

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Speaker 1: again if you don't have self discipline, so you might

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Speaker 1: fund it for a lot of people, only to end

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Speaker 1: up paying the cost of obesity related illness anyway later on. Now,

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Speaker 1: Having said all of that, of course, what we're not

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Speaker 1: measuring here is the cost of a life right, of

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Speaker 1: a life well lived. And we found a lot of

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Speaker 1: drug for people just to keep them alive, so maybe

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Speaker 1: we should do this just to keep people alive. Now,

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Speaker 1: the good news is that we govi comes off its

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Speaker 1: patent in January, which means that copycats will be made

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Speaker 1: for much cheaper, and that may change the maths maybe

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Speaker 1: next year, maybe the year there after, but for now,

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Speaker 1: if you're giving it to everyone who might need it,

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Speaker 1: the cost would simply be too much to justify. For

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Speaker 1: more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news talks.

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Speaker 1: It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio.