obesity as a disease

I am responding to a comment yesterday in response to my entry about the 147 billion dollars a year being spent on obesity-related health problems.

The writer queried as to why, if the government is so concerned about these excessive health care expenditures related to obesity conditons, does it not cover obesity treatment. Alcohol,and drug addiction programs are available through government intervention, so why not obesity?

I share this concern and I think the point here is that obesity is mistaken for some syndrome which is under an individual person's control, whereas the other addictive problems such as alcohol are viewed differently.
'
I believe that weight issues are very freequently present because of neurochemical imbalances and other physical issues that are NOT under someone's "control". I believe that virtually everyone who is overweight does not want to be this way, and this crosses racial, gender and socioeconomic diffeerences. As a matter of fact the % of obesity has risen in higher socioeconomic groups at a faster rate than other groups.

Obesity is a DISEASE in and of itself, Yes, it causes other disease states, similar to alcoholism being a disease, yetr causing other disease states such as liver failure. We, as a nation need to treat obesity as a disease and offer treatments for it. If we do not become more aggressively involved, there will be no answer to healthcare reform because expenditures on comorbidities will bankrupt any system put in place.