According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately three quarters of total U.S. health care expenditures are spent on preventable diseases, including such conditions as coronary heart disease, diabetes, age-related eye disease, and osteoporosis, but only three percent (3%) of health care expenditures are invested in disease prevention programs.
Although the U.S. health care system does not have as strong an emphasis on preventive medicine as other Western countries, many observers predict that the United States is in the midst of a slow revolution of its health care model—transitioning to a model that is more focused on maintaining individual and overall health and wellness as opposed to a continued reactive approach focused on single-event interventions.
Most Americans are aware of the challenges facing the country’s health care system: escalating costs, denied tests and treatments, fragmented care, less time available for a patient-physician relationship, medical errors and inefficiencies, and the new health insurance marketplace.
However, important cultural, technological, and demographic trends are increasingly putting more control into the hands of patients to directly manage their health. This transformation has enormous potential to change how medicine is practiced and how the health care system, as a whole, operates.
This report demonstrates that significant cost savings can be realized by health care payers, such as insurance companies, and consumers through the use of dietary supplements that have a demonstrable and substantial effect on the risk of costly disease-related events among targeted high-risk populations.
Specifically, this report examines evidence showing that the usage of key dietary supplements can reduce overall disease treatment-related hospital utilization costs associated with heart disease, age-related eye disease, diabetes, and bone disease in the United States among those at a high risk of experiencing a costly, disease-related event.
Thus, targeted dietary supplementation regimens are recommended as a means to help control rising societal health care costs, and as a means for high-risk individuals to minimize the chance of having to deal with potentially costly events and to invest in increased quality of life.
The key findings of the potential for health care cost savings when high risk US adults aged 55 and older and diagnosed with these chronic diseases, used one of eight different supplement regimens at preventative intake levels:
Calcium plus vitamin D in women with osteoporosis. The potential net savings would be $1.25 billion.
Magnesium for osteoprorosis. The potential net savings would be $593 million.
Lutein and zeaxanthin for age-related eye diseases, included age-related macular degeneration and cataracts. These supplements are reported to reduce the risk of these diseases by 23%, which would offer potential savings of $930 million.
Omega-3s for coronary heart disease (CHD). CHD currently costs the United States $78 billion, and with omega-3s offering a relative risk reduction of 6.9%, the overall net potential savings would be $930 million.
B vitamins for CHD. Scientific literature suggests that B vitamins may offer a relative risk reduction of 3.3%, which gives a potential $560 million in net savings.
Psyllium dietary fiber for CHD. Psyllium supplements offer an 11.5% relative risk reduction, which would provide $2.3 billion in savings.
Phytosterols for CHD. Phytosterols offer an 11.2% relative risk reduction, which would give $3.3 billion in savings.
Chromium picolinate for potential diabetes-attributed CHD costs. Chromium picolinate offers a potential cost savings of $970 million.
Chronic diseases affect millions of people’s quality of life. Dietary supplements can play an important role in prevention of diseases, along with adopting lifestyle practices known to favor better health. This report is good news for health care practitioners, insurance companies and patients because it supports the position that certain dietary supplements have the potential to reduce medical costs associate with some diseases.
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