Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And now the rising toll from dementia economically, medically, and emotionally.
A study by the RAND Corporation published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine estimates the cost of caring for Americans with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia between $157 billion and $215 billion dollars a year. On a per-person basis, that translates into $41,000 to $56,000 dollars annually.
The costs include direct medical spending, informal family care, lost productivity and long-term care. The latter accounted for 84 percent of total costs. And the problem is growing fast. The costs and number of people with dementia are expected to more than double within 30 years.
We explore the findings and implications with two experts, Dr. Ronald Petersen, the director of the Alzheimer's Research Center at the Mayo Clinic, and Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, which is part of NIH. His institute financed the new study.
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