Alzheimer’s Treatments: $1 Trillion. Saving America’s Memory: Priceless

March 25, 2009:

Forget the AIG scandal. Move over, TARP. Demographers estimate the cost of dementia to both Medicare and Medicaid combined will top $20 trillion over the next two score years. Take a look at the report the Alzheimer's Study Group conducted on American’s with Alzheimer’s—their numbers suggest that Alzheimer’s related costs to Medicare and Medicaid alone will top $1 trillion annually by 2050. The report says that in 2008, Alzheimer’s replaced diabetes as the 6th leading cause of death in the U.S., with 100,000 more cases diagnosed than in 2007. Currently, there are 9.9 million unpaid caregivers providing adult day care to Alzheimer’s victims, with twice that many involved in treating them.

In 2004, the Medicare cost per dementia patient over 65 was $33,007, and the cost is rising. In 2005 alone, Medicare expenditures for Alzheimer's exceeded $90 billion. Every 70 seconds an American develops Alzheimer's disease, and there are an estimated 5.1 million Americans over 65 battling the disease. By 2031, as the Baby Boomer generation ages, an estimated 3.5 million people will have Alzheimer's.

This week, Maria Shriver, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, former Senator Bob Kerry and Newt Gingrich all testified on Capitol Hill on the effects of Alzheimer’s, urging the U.S. to step up research into the currently-incurable malady. Citing the success federally underwritten AIDS research has had (for $10 billion research dollars, over $1.4 trillion in AIDS treatment costs were averted, according to the National Institutes of Health), Newt Gingrich strongly advocated a new fiscal model for government support of Alzheimer's inquiry, one that would measure public investment against public savings.