Alzheimer’s and the Economy

Many of the medical costs that Congress has begun to battle can be controlled. There is an argument this includes the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, drugs, doctor visits and preventable diseases. People who live lives that are likely to cause disease or early death can be taxed. Congress and the White House almost certainly will have to drive down the price of entitlement programs, or risk much higher deficits. But some costs cannot be cut now, and in other cases these costs are unavoidably rising.

The Alzheimer’s Association recently released its “2012 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures.” The report says that the costs of the disease will be $200 billion this year, about a third of the Defense Department’s budget costs. At least $120 billion of these costs will be a burden to Medicare and Medicaid because:

Medicare payments for an older person with Alzheimer’s and other dementias are nearly three times higher and Medicaid payments 19 times higher than for seniors without Alzheimer’s and other dementias. With nearly 30 percent of people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias on both Medicare and Medicaid, compared to 11 percent of individuals without these conditions, these costs will only continue to soar in the coming years given the projected rapidly escalating prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease as the baby boomers age.

Legislators often believe that nearly any national financial problem can be solved if both parties or other battling factions can agree on how to solve it. One of the reasons that politicians get attacked is because voters believe elected officials fail to resolve issues that clearly can be resolved. In the case of Alzheimer’s, the cost is permanent and will be for a long time. Elected officials must admit that and work around it as they do any other disease not yet begun to be offset with a cure.

In the case of Alzheimer’s, the $200 billion likely will grow at a rapid pace. That leaves politicians with the hard reality that the government cannot solve some things. The costs of some of these has become extraordinary, and that makes a balanced budget agreement harder to obtain.

It also means that some programs that might have survived cuts will not, because others are absolutely necessary. Tough luck, perhaps, because the medical community is nowhere near a solution. But tough luck is part of the budget process, whether or not anyone wants to admit it.

Douglas A. McIntyre