Products for the Obese: XXL Coffins & More
June 1, 2004 -- Society is now adjusting for obesity in death as well as in life.
Just visit the Goliath Casket Company in Lynne, Ind., and talk with president Keith Davis. "We make the super-size of oversize caskets," says Davis.
Goliath specializes in coffins for the obese — for the deceased weighing as much as 1,000 pounds. Business has increased by 20 percent a year for the past decade.
In the company's factory, workers weld metal frames, including some that are bigger than the bed of a pickup truck. A standard-sized casket today is 27 inches wide."When we started out," says Davis, "we were building 33-inch-wide caskets and we thought that was an obese casket." But 10 years ago, he says, that began to change. "Now we're up to 52-inch-wide caskets and I hope that's going to be large enough."
Extra Large, Extra Costs
Transporting a casket for an obese person can cost twice as much as a regular casket. There are other costs such as larger cemetery plots, which make a funeral for an obese person at least 30 percent more expensive.
"There's huge economic cost here in upsizing the size of the world," says Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist and professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "I don't think anybody can get a handle on them easily because they're subtly spread throughout society. But they're significant."
Those costs are keenly felt at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City, near the Columbia University campus.
A standard-sized wheelchair that once fit almost every patient is now being replaced by wheelchairs that are more than 30 percent bigger and eight times as expensive. St. Luke's also bought larger blood pressure cuffs and scales that reach 1,000 pounds. The hospital now also bolts toilets to the floor instead of the wall. And a special bed for obese patients costs five times as much as a regular hospital bed — more than $18,000.
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