$2,000,000,000,000
This is what the USA spends on health care (or disease management is probably a more accurate term)
Yep a 2 and 12 zero's...of which some $750 Billion is wasted (see quote below)
The Institute of Medicine reports on the magnitude of the problem in their release by stating, "The costs of the system's current inefficiency underscore the urgent need for a systemwide transformation. The committee calculated that about 30 percent of health spending in 2009 -- roughly $750 billion -- was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems. Moreover, inefficiencies cause needless suffering. By one estimate, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state."
The medical care costs of people with chronic illnesses represent 75 percent of the $2 trillion the United States spends annually on health care (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010). By 2030, the global economic burden of noncommunicable chronic diseases is estimated to be $47 trillion (Bloom et al., 2011).
$47,000,000,000,000
Just how scary is this? In less than 20 years.
Just imagine how much better use could be made from the money spent essentially on lifestyle diseases (heart attacks, stroke, cancers, Type 2 Diabetes etc etc)....education, agriculture, environmental protection.
I wonder what the situation in Australia, Europe, UK etc is....fortunately these chronic lifestyle diseases are winnable battles...they might be long but they are winnable....we all live in hope.
Rossco
Eat healthy. Move more. Live Better. Pretty simple really.
