Diabetes, Cancer, HIV

Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 5:23 pm

Just wondering what all you think about which Costs more Diabetes, Cancer, or HIV relating to Direct Medical costs.

And give me your guess on what it may be for each.

registered · Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 8:07 am

It's gotta be diabetes. When you look at all the complications related to diabetes. Blindness, venous degeneration, obesity and many other problems. It takes years for Diabetes to become fatal. In the mean time the medical bills continue to pile up.

Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 9:55 am

being a cancer survivor and still paying off the bills ... I think it's cancer. I mean I know diabetes is pretty expensive, but more of it is covered by medicare or private insurance. My mother had diabetes but controlled most of it with diet. I couldn't do that with cancer. Wink

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:18 am

Here are 2 figures:

Cancer:
$64 billion in direct medical costs

Diabetes:
$92 Billion in direct medical costs

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 9:25 am

Ya, but those diabetes figures wouldn't be so high if people would take better care of themselves. Gluttony is the American way of life. The cure is easy ... control your diet.

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:10 am

careful careful. not all diabetes is diet related.

I was diagnosed at age of 15 and was a light 79 pounds.

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:24 am

No not all. But most are.

Being overweight is not the only cause. Like you, I know very skinny people that have diabetes, and they still control it with diet. Some people it's so advanced they can't control it with diet, but could have if they taken better care of their bodies to begin with.

People just don't take care of themselves anymore. They stuff themselves with prepackaged foods that are loaded with chemicals, sodium and sugars. But they don't care because it's easy. All of my family that are like this have diabetes. My mother, her 3 bothers, my father, 2 of his sisters, one of my brothers, grandparents on pop's side, a nephew (I could go on quite a ways with this list). The ones of us that eat fresh foods, and actually cook real food ... we don't. Genetically diabetes runs strong in my family.

Diabetes has escalated over the years. So has obesity. Look at what we eat as Americans. I shutter at the thought of eating McDonalds. So while yes .. being fat and eating the wrong stuff isn't the ONLY reason for diabetes. It's a huge factor in it. And that factor people can control if they wanted.

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:36 am

I agree that people need to stop shoveling food into their mouths and they need to get up and off their butts and do a few laps around the block and that would slow the rate of Type II diabetes. Type II diabetes has a very strong genetic link and is strongly related to weight and activity.

Type I is totally different. The cause is unknown and has no links to diet and weight. Type I diabetes can never be controled by diet alone it must be controled by shots. The reason for this is that Type 1 the cells that produce insulin are destroyed by the immune system and the insulin must be injected to maintain health once the body looses about 85% of these cells. In Type II The body does not use insulin effectively and it can be controlled by diet, exercise which makes the body more sensitive to the insulin it makes and pills which can either increase production or make you more sensitive to your own insulin.

The Cure I think will lye in education for type II diabetes.

The cure for type one will be much much harder since not only will they have to find a way to repopulate the body with Islet cells but they will also have to find a way to keep the body from killing them off again without the use of Anti-Rejection drugs which is more deadly than being diabetic at this time in history.

I for one have been taking insulin via shots (or something like shots) for 12 years and now for control reasons am connected to a $5000 machine which helps me fine tune the control more than would be possible on shots and sometimes that control is not that great.

Insulin is not a Cure its only LifeSupport. lol Wink

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:43 am

Well then what's your numbers for Type I only diabetes. If you want to compair apples to apples. What you was compairing before was not equal.

Type I can't not be controlled. Cancer can not be controlled. There are no cures for either, but band-aids for both.

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:45 am

BTW ... and this is OT ... what kind of machine are you one? is it something that you wear all the time? or hook up to?

That statement kinda peaked my interest since last night I was watching a doc on how they are making people walk with spinal cord injuries. It's not related to what you have, but medical advancement is an interesting subject to me.

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 11:58 am

I am on a MiniMed/Medtronic 712 Insulin Pump. Connected 24/7 attaced via a sub-q needle which is moved every 3 days or so. Its a great advancement in control but can still be a very big pain in the ass. lol

As far as numbers I can't get those since the wonderful governemt of ours won't do a breakdown of the 2. Actually it was apples to apples to a point. the numbers covered ALL types of Cancer as well as all types of Diabetes (since there are a few more than the 2 types I mentioned but they are very small in numbers)

Type 1 Diabetes is also the more expensive in general to control but the complications for the 2 are the same when it comes to them.

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:03 pm

One thing I realized is a group I help run for those of us on an insulin pump is the cost in maintainance (insulin, testing supplies, infusion sets) for the small group that we have runs about 72 million a year. The large majority of us are Type 1 diabetics.

If you are interested: http://www.insulin-pumpers.org/about.shtml

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:32 pm

More numbers I have found:

Cancer Indirect Costs: $125 billion.

Diabetes Indirect Costs: $40 billion

These numbers I don't think are to accurate because of several factors but I thought I would include them anyway.