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Diabetes not only can be a devastating disease to handle physically, it’s an expensive one.
The average annual health-care costs in 2009 for a person with known diabetes totaled about $11,700. That compares to an average of $4,400 for the remaining population, according to data drawn from 10 million UnitedHealthcare members.
The cost jumps to $20,700 for a person with diabetic complications.
These costs are all the more unsettling because of the predictions of tremendous growth in the number of diabetics in the U.S., as well as Indiana. Now, 714,000 Hoosiers have dia- betes, and 1.64 million have pre-diabetes.
Here is some data from a report by the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization:
» More than 50 percent of Americans could have diabetes or pre-diabetes by 2020, with a projected cost of $3.35 trillion over the decade.
» Diabetes and pre-diabetes are expected to account for an estimated 10 percent of total health-care spending by the end of the decade. The annual cost would be almost $500 billion, up from an estimated $194 billion in 2010.
» If programs to prevent and control diabetes were adopted and scaled nationally, UnitedHealth Center’s report said, the life expectancy and health of diabetics would improve, and up to $250 billion could be saved over 10 years.
