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Diabetes in the United States

Cost Information

The total annual economic cost of diabetes in 1997 was estimated to be $98 billion. That includes $44 billion in direct medical and treatment costs and $54 billion for indirect costs attributed to disability and mortality.
In 1997, total health expenditures incurred by people with diabetes amounted to $77.7 billion including health care costs not resulting from diabetes. The per capita costs of health care for people with diabetes amounted to $10,071, while health care costs for people without diabetes amounted to $2,669 in 1997.

Additional information:

Direct Costs of Diabetes
Indirect Costs of Diabetes

Direct Costs of Diabetes

Estimated at $44 billion in 1997.
Represents 5.8 percent of total personal health-care expenditures in the U.S.; however, diagnosed diabetes patients account for only 3.8 percent of the total U.S. civilian population.
Approximately $27.5 billion was spent for inpatient hospital care and $5.5 billion for nursing home care.
Diabetes-related hospitalizations totaled 13.9 million days in 1997. Rates of outpatient care were highest for physician office visits, which included 30.3 million visits to treat persons with diabetes.
The mean length of stay for hospitalization was 5.4 days.
Cardiovascular disease is the most costly complication of type 2 diabetes, accounting for more than $7 billion of the $44.1 billion annual direct medical costs for diabetes in 1997.
Sustained reduction in A1C (blood glucose) levels among adults with diabetes was associated with significant cost savings within 1 to 2 years.

Indirect Costs of Diabetes

Estimated to be $54 billion in 1997. Disability costs amounted to $37.1 billion and mortality amounted to approximately $17 billion.
In 1997, diabetes accounted for a loss of nearly 88 million disability days. Of those, over 14 million work-loss days from jobs outside of the home were attributable to diabetes in 1997.
A total of 74,927 workers were reported to be permanently disabled because of diabetes.
On average, people with diabetes ages 18 to 64 lost 8.3 days from work, as compared with 1.7 days for people without diabetes.
Based on death certificate data, diabetes contributed to 209,664 deaths in 1999.

Source:

For more information, contact the American Diabetes Association at 1-800-DIABETES (1-800-342-2383), or visit the Web site at www.diabetes.org/.

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