NC Healthcare Coverage Blog

A new study has found that the amount of people diagnosed with diabetes will almost double in the U.S. in the coming 25 years. Not only this, but the cost of treating diabetes will nearly triple. The study was done by researchers based at the University of Chicago and was published on November 27 in the journal Diabetes Care.

Findings from the study indicate that the amount of diagnosed and undiagnosed people will increase from nearly 24 million this year to around 44 million in the year 2034. During this same time, yearly diabetes-related treatment costs are projected to increase from $113 billion to $336 billion in 2007 dollars.

Unfortunately, Medicare spending on diabetes is predicted to climb from $45 billion to $171 billion and could go beyond current estimations for all Medicare costs, according to researchers.

A lot of the increase in cases and costs will be prompted by aging baby boomers, who are the 77 million Americans who were born between 1946 and 1957. Dr. Elbert Huang, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study, said “It’s a combination of the increasing numbers of people who have diabetes along with the cost of treating diabetes that gives us these frightening numbers.” He also said “The study reinforces the importance of public health efforts to prevent diabetes – by transforming the way we eat and increasing the amount of exercise we do – and emphasizes the importance of finding new ways of treating diabetes efficiently.”

The findings could even be conservative since the researchers’ projections are based on stable obesity rates. For many years, the amount of people becoming obese has steadily climbed. The authors of the study think that obesity levels for people who don’t have diabetes will top out in the next ten years and then decrease slightly, from 30 percent today to around 27 percent in 2033.

Part of the reason diabetes costs are climbing is due to the diseases striking younger people which can mean a longer period for costly problems to develop. Currently, diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, amputations and end-stage kidney disease.