The Gray Tsunami

You may recall recent findings that the rate of dementia among people 65 and older has been falling in England and Wales, and this is likely true here as well. It's basically because people are generally healthier. But . . .It's very strange how the general reaction seems to have been, "Oh well then, what have we been so worried about?" News that isn't quite as bad as you thought it was going to be is still bad news. And the fact is that the prevalence of dementia still rises with age, and we're still going to have a lot more people living with dementia in coming years. The estimate here of tripling by 2050 might be too high, but 2 1/2 times as many is still a whole lot.Now the IOM raises the alarm about cancer, another disease that is strongly associated with increasing age and which costs a whole hell of a lot of money to treat. Here's a good example of why medical advances can drive medical costs: there aren't any effective treatments for dementia, so it's actually relatively cheap. Many people do ultimately need custodial care and that can bankrupt families and strains Medicaid budgets, but Medicare is going to have to pay for all this cancer care and new therapies can cost $100,000 and up. Even though the benefit is generally small, our laws and our cultural consensus say that we still have to pay for them.IOM also argues that advances in the field are so rapid that many physicians and treatment centers aren't keeping up; and that we'll have a growing shortage of relevan...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs