The sign over a hospital toilet illustrated why health care costs are soaring in the United States, said U.S. Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, who toured Baptist Memorial Hospital Southaven today.

“Upstairs in this hospital, I went into the restroom and there’s a sign on the toilet, ‘Maximum weight of this toilet 350 pounds,” Barrasso said. “Think about that. There was a story that came out last week in USA Today, in the Wall Street Journal, in The New York Times about the cost of obesity to the health care system. It was $178 billion a year in added costs because of people who are eating too much and exercising too little.”

Barrasso visited the hospital along with fellow Republicans U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Coburn and Barrasso are doctors and have been hosting discussions on health care at various venues throughout the U.S. They met with the medical staff of the hospital and the patient advisory council during an invitation-only event.

The senators in an interview before that meeting said health care reform needs incentives to control costs, such as addressing the nation’s obesity epidemic. Other incentives they cited include tort reform to cut the cost of doctors practicing defensive medicine and measures to eliminate fraud. Coburn is an author of a bill that Wicker said he supports.

Wicker said he opposes a government-sponsored plan for the uninsured as proposed by Democratic legislators, which he characterized as a “massive take over by the federal government of one-sixth of our economy.”

“We save money rather than spend money,” Coburn said, explaining the bill. “We eliminate the discrimination against the Medicaid patient because we put every Medicaid patient in private insurance. The state of Mississippi will probably save $300 million a year when we do that. Not only do we cut the federal costs of it, we actually save Mississippi money.”

Coburn said the government should follow the example of Safeway Inc. in enacting health care reform. Safeway’s plan provides incentives for employees to lower risk factors and make healthier life choices.

Steven A. Burd, the company’s chief executive officer, in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this summer wrote that the company had kept its per capita health-care costs flat for the past four years. Premiums vary according to factors such as tobacco use, weight and cholesterol levels. Employees can receive refunds on their premiums when they reach health goals, such as losing weight.

Money spent on health problems stemming from obesity accounts for almost 10 percent of all medical costs, according to a study released last month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The senators criticized Democratic health care proposals for not addressing the obesity problem and not identifying other ways to reduce the cost of health care.