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(Bloomberg)Diabetes or prediabetic conditions will strike half of all adult Americans by the end of the decade unless people drop extra weight, says UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer by sales.
The disease will cost the nation almost $3.4 trillion, with more than 60% paid by the U.S. government, in the 10 years through 2020, according to a study released today by the Minnetonka, Minn.-based insurer. The number of Americans afflicted with high blood sugar will rise 44% to 135 million in 2020, from 93.8 million in 2010, researchers said.
Diabetes is growing as the U.S. population skews older and heavier, said Simon Stevens, the executive vp who leads the company’s Center for Health Reform, an effort to analyze how medical care should be delivered and priced. About 12% of the estimated 235 million adult Americans are diabetic, compared with 28% who are prediabetic, a condition marked by elevated blood sugar after fasting, according to the study. Prediabetics can lower the odds of getting diabetes by losing weight, he said.
“There is nothing inevitable” about the increase in diabetes, Mr. Stevens said in a telephone interview. “Even quite modest changes, like losing 5% of body weight, have the potential of producing decreases. If we don’t take obesity seriously, we risk our children living shorter lives than we parents have lived.”
This is an “epidemic that is larger than breast cancer and HIV together,” said Deneen Vojta, a physician and senior vp at the UnitedHealth center. “Yet it doesn’t feel like an epidemic in this country because of the real under-awareness of the situation.”