Fmr. FDA Commissioner Gottlieb: There Will Be ‘a Lot of Morbidity’ Due to Weight Gain, Drinking, Mental Health, During Pandemic

On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said that there will be “a lot of morbidity” “on the back end” of the coronavirus pandemic due to things like people gaining weight, increased drinking, mental health issues, and people not doing health screenings during the pandemic. Gottlieb also predicted an increase in healthcare costs at the same time due to more people seeking serious health treatment.

Gottlieb said, “Look, we need to anticipate the fact that there’s going to be a lot of morbidity on the back end of this. People who gained weight, people — too much drinking during COVID, mental health issues, and people who didn’t follow up with routine screenings, so they didn’t catch cancers and other kinds of medical conditions early enough where you were able to intervene more easily and implement curative therapy. There is going to be a lot of morbidity on the back end of this. We need to start, as you said, anticipating that. Doctors need to be more aggressive in bringing people in for screening. And we need to recognize there’s going to be a lot of healthcare costs, a surge in healthcare costs, probably, on the back end of this. You’ll see medical loss ratios start to get compressed for managed care companies as more people start to seek more serious health care.”

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