By Cristina Fernández Pereda 

Nearly half of Americans will be obese by 2015, the Obesity Society predicted at a panel session Wednesday. Public Health experts and congressional lawyers discussed at George Washington University what the next president should do to reduce obesity rates.

“It is an extraordinary difficulty that we face and will continue to face on this issue,” Dora Hughes, Health Policy Advisor to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said. Even though it is a problem affecting most countries, obesity has spread in the last two decades in the United States more than anywhere else.

Peter Orszag, director of the congressional budget office explained that researchers justify this increase with the lack of balance between the calories one person takes in and the calories he or she burns. “It appears that you can track the increase of caloric in-take to snacking and not to meals,” Orszag said.

He mentioned that obesity is also related to the reduction of exercise among Americans but that “it would be foolish to look only to one side of the problem,” and not consider all the social, economic and environmental factors.

Obesity rates are higher among low-income people with lower education degrees. Laurie Rubiner, legislative director for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., introduced the access to health insurance coverage as one of the problems that obese people are facing in the United States, where 47 million people are uninsured. “Coverage does matter,” Rubiner said.

Clinton’s universal health care program released on Tuesday includes coverage for those currently uninsured and emphasizes on the relationship between patients and their doctors. This is a shared concern with Sen. Chris Dodd. “The United States has one of the lowest rates of people keeping the same doctor for more than five years,” Barbara M. Smith, lawyer for the Democrat from Connecticut’s campaign, said.

Along with access to health insurance, panelists agreed that education is a very important factor on the fight to reduce obesity. Orszag explained that vending machines in school might not be helping when trying to educate children about healthy food. “Some studies have shown that consumption is influenced by availability of food rather than taste of hunger,” he said.

“This is really a young person’s problem, we need to hit it at the beginning,” said David Bonior, John Edwards for President Campaign Manager. Like other panelists, Bonior mentioned walking to school, community education on healthy food and physical activity as habits to that should be taught to children to avoid obesity.

Director of STOP Obesity Alliance Christine Ferguson said that thinking about a solution to reduce obesity must consider “how easy do we want to make it for people to eat healthy and lose weight,” referring to different legislation proposals to tax fast-food products or reduce the cost of health insurance for those who lose weight.

Health experts and Democratic presidential advisors agreed that the access to health care will be a very important factor to reduce obesity rates in the United States, along with making coverage mandatory and lowering the prices by insurance companies.

On the other side, Health Policy Advisor for Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., Lanhee Chen argued that “what makes the market work is choice.” He alleged that there are 50 separate legislations on health care in this country and unifying them by making coverage mandatory wouldn’t fit with the current way market works.

“We are going to deal with this for a long time and we need to do a concentrated effort. It is important to understand what actually works, what made some progress and remember that we still have a long way to go,” Don Moran, Health Care Advisor for the Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani, said.

“There is no other issue Americans care more at the domestic level than obesity,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin. “We should attack this problem with the same power that we attack other problems in America,” he said.