The Burrill Report
“Alzheimer’s disease affects 5.4 million Americans and one in eight people older than 65 are afflicted by the disease.”
Caring for people with Alzheimer’s or other related dementias will cost the United States an estimated $200 billion in 2012, according to a new report from the Alzheimer’s Association.
Currently, most of the cost burden is paid by Medicaid and Medicare. The report finds that average per-person Medicaid payments are 19 times higher for seniors with Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Medicare payments are three times higher.
“These numbers will only continue to soar in the coming years, given the projected rapidly escalating prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease as baby boomers age,” says the report, which suggests that the expense of caring for people with Alzheimer’s could reach $1 trillion by 2050 if nothing is actively done to curb the disease.
One in seven people with Alzheimer’s, or about 800,000 U.S. citizens, live alone and nearly half of those individuals have no appointed caregiver, further raising the hazards posed by dementia. These individuals are much more likely to go undiagnosed, fall, or even die compared to people with Alzheimer’s who don’t live alone.
Alzheimer’s disease affects 5.4 million Americans and one in eight people older than 65 are afflicted by the disease. It is currently the sixth leading cause of death and the only cause of death amongst the top 10 that lacks a means of being prevented, slowed, or cured all together.
“While lives affected and care costs soar, the cost of doing nothing is far greater than acting now,” says Harry Johns, president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association said. “Alzheimer’s is a tremendous cost-driver for families and for Medicare and Medicaid. This crisis simply cannot be allowed to reach its maximum scale because it will overwhelm an already overburdened system.”