Diabetics May Double in 25 Years, Increasing Health Costs $200 Billion

Health spending in the United States grew 6.1 percent in 2007, to $2.2 trillion or $7,421 per person.

The number of Americans with diabetes will nearly double over the next 25 years, rising from 23.7 million in 2009 to 44.1 million in 2034, according to a study by the University of Chicago.In the same period, medical costs associated with treating the disease will triple from 113 billion dollars to 336 billion dollars, even without a rise in the incidence of obesity, according to the study published in the December issue of Diabetes Care.

This graphic from the National Geographic shows the amazingly high cost of health care in the USA and the poor performance. Granted just life expectancy is not a good overall measure of success. But this just mirrors the general mediocre at best performance of the USA health care system.

USA health care spending continues to grow, consuming an ever increasing share of the economic production of the USA. USA health care spending is twice that of other rich countries for worse health care results.

Americans die younger than people in other wealthy countries — and the gap is getting worse, a new report shows.

The very frustrating aspect of the broken health care system in the USA is that it has been an enormous problem for decades. It isn’t that we have just discovered we have a fatally poor health care system in the last few years. The broken system has been obvious for decades and keeps getting worse.

5 painful health-care lessons from Massachusetts:

The decisions over the past 30 years to pass huge huge tax bills to those in the future is unsustainable. Saying you cut taxes when all you actually do is postpone them is dishonest. However, many people go along with such false statements so politicians have learned to buy votes today by raising taxes on the future.