Dispatches

Britain's Big Fat Bill (2013x36)

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As Britain gets fatter, Channel 4 Dispatches investigates what the real cost is to the nation. The programme follows the treatment of some of Britain's morbidly obese patients to reveal the spiralling cost to the NHS. Having to spend money on everything from bigger chairs and beds to expensive medication and dialysis means obesity is now costing the NHS over £5 billion a year. One solution could be weight loss surgery, a procedure that could transform up to 250,000 people's lives and save the taxpayer huge amounts of money. But Dispatches reveals that NHS England's reforms, intended to create uniform access to life-changing, money-saving operations, are in fact expected to lead to fewer rather than more procedures, a situation that could cause misery to some of the country's sickest patients.