Study: Diabetes Costs America $218 Billion A Year

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

TRENTON, N.J. — As diabetes is rapidly becoming one of the world's most common diseases, its financial cost is mounting, too, to well over $200 billion a year in the U.S. alone, according to a new study.
The study, released Tuesday, puts the total at $218 billion last year _ the first comprehensive estimate of the financial toll diabetes takes, according to Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk A/S, which paid for the study.
That figure includes direct medical care costs, from insulin and pills for controlling patients' blood sugar to amputations and hospitalizations, plus indirect costs such as lost productivity, disability and early retirement.
The $218 billion amounts to about 10 percent of all U.S. health care spending by government and the public, about $2.1 trillion in 2006, and nearly half the $448.5 billion cost of heart disease and stroke.
The study, conducted by the Lewin Group consultants, estimates costs 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.