Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a global issue now? Same in Germany.
I think the global problem is that medicine has improved so much that, unlike a hundred years ago, it's impossible to provide the full extent of modern medicine (which is huge!) to everyone, so some form of rationing/filtering is inevitable and necessary. You can do the rationing through market forces, where people who can't afford it get less care; you can do the rationing through some other allocation system (e.g.…
There's a "motte and bailey" that goes on with healthcare - emergency services like handling broken legs and illness and such is actually relatively cheap; it's the prolonged costs of all the various things we die of that really puts a burden on things.
Sure we spend $5 million now and then to save premie infants, etc, but that's such a small portion of total healthcare spending as to be a rounding error.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/HExpType.pdf breaks some of it down, but not in detail; I suspect that a huge amount of healthcare expenses can be directly tied to obesity and its consequences.