The Milken Institute, an independent economics think tank, has just released a large study of the burden of chronic disease on the U.S. economy.
The report provides details on the financial impact of 7 diseases (cancers, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, mental disorders and pulmonary conditions), in terms of both the cost of treatment and lost productivity.
Figures are provided for individual states and for the country as a whole. The The current trends are extrapolated to provide estimates of the economic impact over the coming decades. The report also details the savings that could be made if serious efforts were made to improve Americans' health.
For example, in 2003, there were 2.4m reported cases of stroke. This resulted in $22bn in lost productivity, and the expenditure for treatment was $13.57bn. The total cost for all 7 diseases (expenditure for treatment and lost productivity) in that same year was greater than $1.3 trillion.
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How we can put price to the priceless and moreover to the health of those in disease?.
It is paradoxical that a country without a universal health system applicable to all citizens put into work the machinery and the most brilliant economic brains to calculate the expenditure, rather than to implement a good system.