Primary tabs
Location
NPR.ORG: Diabetes' Economic Toll Goes Far Beyond Medical Bills.
By now most people have probably heard the dire predictions about how much the growing prevalence of diabetes will cost the U.S. health system in the coming years and decades.
But a new study from researchers at Yale suggests that the disease, which currently affects nearly 8 percent of the U.S. population, could have significant nonmedical costs to society as well.
The study, which appears in the January issue of the policy journal Health Affairs, suggests that young people diagnosed with the disease are more likely to drop out of high school and to forgo or fail to finish college. As a result, they're likely to earn less than those without diabetes.
"These differences are pretty large," said Jason Fletcher, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health and lead author of the study. The differences, for example, are larger than differences between males and females and between whites and African-Americans.
Click Here to read the full story.
