
- This year, America will spend $226 billion caring for the over 5 million people with Alzheimer’s disease, including $153 billion by Medicare and Medicaid. If nothing changes, in 2050, America will have over 16 million people with Alzheimer’s and costs will increase to over $1 trillion.
- Nearly 1 in every 5 Medicare dollars is currently spent on someone with Alzheimer’s. That will increase to nearly 1 in every 3 dollars in 2050.
- If the federal government invests what scientists say is needed to develop a treatment by 2025, the federal government will recoup that investment in less than three years -- a great rate of return.
A group of nearly 900 advocates will be calling on their elected representatives later this month, on March 25, 2015. I have been invited to attend by the Alzheimer’s Association and to work to get representatives to join the Alzheimer’s Task Force, which currently has 180 members from both parties and from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Task Force is active in securing funding for Alzheimer’s research and in raising the awareness of Alzheimer’s disease.
Please consider joining me in Washington D.C. Registration is still open.The Association will train you in the two days before we meet with our representatives so you will know exactly how to proceed.
If that’s not feasible for you, do sign up and e-mail your representatives, especially between now and March 25, to let them know youare counting on them to help. We need to impress on them the immediacy of this need to find a cause and cure. Thank you for stepping up and being counted in this endeavor.