The diabetes population in the United States will almost double over the next 25 years and annual medical spending on the disease is projected to hit $336 billion, up from $113 billion today, according to a study published in the December issue of Diabetes Care. The National Changing Diabetes® Program (NCDP), a program of Novo Nordisk, commissioned the analysis by a team from the University of Chicago.
According to the forecast, the number of Americans living with diabetes will rise from 23.7 million in 2009 to 44.1 million in 2034. For the Medicare program, the increases over the next 25 years are even more dramatic: the number of Americans living with diabetes and covered by Medicare will rise from 6.5 million to 14.1 million, and Medicare spending on diabetes will almost quadruple, skyrocketing from $45 billion this year to $171 billion in 2034. Based on this projection, "Medicare spending alone will represent just over 50% of direct spending on diabetes in 2034," the authors concluded.
Unlike past efforts to predict trends in diabetes, the model developed by the University of Chicago team considers the natural progression of the disease, effects of treatment and obesity rates in the United States, which are "factors that are currently not used by government budget analysts," according to the authors.
"Obesity is a significant driver of future increases in the number of Americans with diabetes," said Michael O'Grady, Ph.D., one of the study authors and a senior fellow at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. "While our modeling, as well as that done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, project obesity rates leveling off, neither model has obesity rates lowering substantially. High obesity rates among the American population over an extended period of time substantially increases the probability of developing type 2 diabetes."
This forecasting model, which the authors contend improves the rigor of the estimates of health care spending for diabetes, was designed to inform policymakers as they explore ways to control spiraling health care costs. Currently, official government estimates of the potential costs and cost offsets associated with proposed preventive health legislation do not consider savings that may occur more than 10 years out, thus providing an incomplete view of preventive health measures as an investment.