Dire news about diabetes

A new report from UnitedHealth Group states that half the country could have Diabetes or Pre-diabetes at a Cost of $3.35 Trillion by 2020.

 

This recent report from Simon Stevens and UnitedHealth’s Center for Health Reform and Modernization is a big story.

Diabetes currently affects about 27 million Americans and is one of the fastest-growing diseases in the nation. Another 67 million Americans are estimated to have pre-diabetes, or metabolic syndrome. There are often no symptoms, and many people do not even know they have the disease. In fact, more than 60 million Americans do not know that they have pre-diabetes. Experts predict that one out of three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetimes, putting them at grave risk for heart and kidney disease, nerve damage, blindness and limb amputation.

New estimates show diabetes and pre-diabetes will account for an estimated 10 percent of total health care spending by the end of the decade at an annual cost of almost $500 billion – up from an estimated $194 billion this year.

How did we get here?

The bigger story is, of course, how we arrived at this point and where we go from here…