Diabetes cases to double and costs to triple by 2034

By David Liu

University of Chicago researchers predict that in the next 25 years, up to 44.1 million Americans will have to live with diabetes, tripling the spending on the disease to $336 billion in 2034.

In 2009, an estimated 23.7 million Americans live with diabetes and the disease costs American people the $113 billion.

The study published in the December, 2009 issue of Diabetes care predicts that the medicare coverage for diabetes will increase from currently 8.2 million to 14.6 million and the medicare spending on diabetes will jump from $45 billion to $171 billion.

"If we don't change our diet and exercise habits or find new, more effective and less expensive ways to prevent and treat diabetes, we will find ourselves in a lot of trouble as a population," said the study's lead author Elbert Huang, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

"Without significant changes in public or private strategies," the authors wrote, "this population and cost growth are expected to add a significant strain to an overburdened health care system."

Diabetes is a disorder of metabolism. People with Type 1 diabetes cannot produce insulin and people with type 2 diabetes can produce insulin, but can't effectively handle blood sugar.

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