IMO, the solution is to "bailout" people with diabetes. It's cheaper
than bailing out the banks!
Kurt
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetesnewsarticle.jsp?storyId=18889920&filename=20081118/ap20081118aponlineallD94HEF0O0newsa****ganpaEDIT.xml
or
http://tinyurl.com/6mu5ok
(excerpt)
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.
A new study, released Tuesday exclusively to The Associated Press,
puts the total at $218 billion last year - the first comprehensive
estimate of the financial toll diabetes takes, according to Danish
pharmaceutical company 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,
according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Direct
and indirect U.S. costs of our top killer - heart disease and stroke -
will total about $448.5 billion this year, according to the American
Heart Association.
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 re****ted 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.
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