Remission of diabetes saves about $150 for every pound of weight that’s lost. Reversing diabetes saves $150 to $300 a week from out-of-pocket medical expenses.

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Good Health Planning for Retirement is more important than Financial Planning. Money can’t buy Good Health but Diabetes Remission saves Money. Contact us and we’ll get you started toward saving money.

Annual Medical Costs

Have you checked your medical expenses for 2018? Are your expenses more than you expected? The average for everybody in the USA today is more than $10,000. If you have diabetes, your expenses likely are more than twice the expenses of people with ideal weight and no diabetes.

Take a look at the figure. The orange column indicates costs on the average for everybody. Note that people who are obese pay an average of about $12,000. People with ideal body weight spend about half that amount or about $6000. Now look at the blue column at the left of the figure. People with diabetes pay almost $14,000 per year, or more than twice the amount paid by people with ideal body weight and no diabetes.

Of course, there’s been a big change in how we pay our bills for medical care. Fortunately, most people have healthcare insurance. During the past 10 years, the average individual healthcare insurance premium has gone up from $160 per month to $390 per month. That’s a three-fold increase! At the same time the deductible for individual healthcare insurance has gone up from $2000 per year to $4000. That’s a twofold increase. Since medical treatment for diabetes has risen from about $150 per month to more than $500, the additional $2000 is unavoidable expense. In addition, copayment (flat fees) or coinsurance (percent costs) is charged for every medical service after reaching the deductible.

Finally, some healthcare insurance plans are increasing rates according to pre-existing medical conditions.

Cost of Chronic Illness

We tend to think about hospitalization for acute illness, surgery and emergencies as terrible costs for medical care. Certainly, we carry healthcare insurance to help us pay for something that requires hospital care. In fact, chronic illness is far more expensive for all of us year after year. Chronic illness causes 86% of all healthcare spending. The combination of diabetes and obesity is the most expensive cause of chronic illness in the USA. The figure shows the relative costs in each major category of illness. You can see in this figure that diabetes and obesity cause medical expenses more than cardiovascular disease or cancer. Both also contribute even more to cost as major causes of cardiovascular disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Both diabetes and obesity result from too many calories taken in and too few used for energy. Both can be corrected and would save more than 10% of total healthcare costs in the USA.

Remarkable Cost Savings with Weight Reduction

Saving money by reducing diabetes and obesity actually has been demonstrated by keeping accounts of money spent on healthcare in an HMO. During 12 months, the medical expenses for men and women with diabetes and obesity were recorded. Those who reduced their weight had less cost for medical care than those who gained weight. All of the savings were from decreased costs of anti-diabetes medications including insulin.    

                                               In the figure, we can see the amounts spent by those who lost more than 3.3% of body weight, those who had no change, and those gained more than 3.6% in body weight. Those who lost weight spent $1700 less in one year than those who gained weight.

Those who lost 5 pounds spent $600 less than those whose weight stayed the same. Those who gained 5 pounds spent $600 more. That’s $120 more or less for every pound of body weight gained or lost.
Since the time these people with diabetes were studied, the cost of diabetes medications has more than doubled. Today, the savings for reducing weight at least 5 pounds would be more than $1200. That would be $240 per pound!

Consider all the Costs of Disability and Death

In addition to costs of medical treatment, there are costs because of reduced productivity at work, at home and in the community. Those personal costs increased total cost by about 40%.
Patients with diabetes and obesity are less able to work or interact with family, friends and community. In addition to increasing total cost, intermittent and permanent disability seriously degrade quality of life.

Lifetime Medical Costs

From birth to the end of life the cost for medical treatment for everybody is about $300,000.
In the figure, you can see that treatment of diabetes increases healthcare costs by about $5,000 every year. That includes costs for treating complications of diabetes as well as treating complications of heart disease, stroke, cancer and dementia.
Here, again, overweight and obesity increase medical costs as well as contributing to the cause of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and stroke.

The $ Value of Good Health

We all know we should save money for retirement. Also, we need good health for length and quality of life after retirement. Money can’t buy health but good health saves money. Reversing diabetes provides good health and the money to enjoy long life in retirement.

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