Posted by: Curt | Under: General Fitness | (0) Comments
In pure dollar amounts, a new study has determined that diabetes costs the US over 200 billion a year in direct and indirect costs. That is a staggering amount of money and it will only increase as our obese population ages. It really frightens me to think about health care costs and insurance as the baby boomer generation starts to really age. After that we have another generation of overweight and obese people who will further strain the economy with health care costs. One estimate I read predicts that within the next 10 years the average American family will spend 25% of their income on health care and insurance. I genuinely hope that the new President will make health education and lifestyle a major part of any health care reforms he proposes. I we don’t do something to change America’s unhealthy lifestyles soon, the costs to society will overwhelm us.
The study, conducted by the Lewin Group consultants, estimates costs to society for people known to have Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes at $174.4 billion combined, a total previously reported by Novo Nordisk, the world’s top producer of insulin and the maker of diabetes pills such as NovoNorm and Prandin. That study was done with the American Diabetes Association.
The new study adds estimates for people who haven’t been diagnosed yet ($18 billion), women who develop diabetes temporarily during pregnancy ($636 million) and those on track to develop diabetes, an increasingly common condition called pre-diabetes ($25 billion).
“Diabetes has not seen a decline or even a plateauing, and the death rate from diabetes continues to rise,” said Dana Haza, senior director of the National Changing Diabetes Program, an effort Novo Nordisk began in 2005 to improve diabetes care and prevention in the U.S.
“The numbers just keep going higher and higher, and what we want to say is, ‘It’s time for government and businesses to focus on it,’” said Haza, who believes diabetes will be the country’s biggest health problem in the future, worsened by the obesity epidemic.
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