Dementia Highest Cost Disease and Rising

Heard this on my way into work this morning and wanted to make sure everyone else reads and/or listens to this report from Marketplace, based on findings in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Essentially we now spend more money to "treat" dementia than we do the two other leading causes of death: cancer and heart disease.

According to the report, 75% of those funds are devoted to nursing home and in-home care, both of which have high costs attached to them because of the nature of the disease: it takes a lot of money to care for someone who cannot care for themselves any longer.

What the report doesn't mention is how underreported that expense is. In San Diego County, 80 percent of those diagnosed with dementia, particularly Alzheimer's, still live at home. If that's the case in other metropolitan areas around the nation, then that is an even more startling statistic, isn't it?

Dementia highest cost disease and rising: Report | Marketplace.org