Insights Offered by Economic Analyses

Economic analyses may be used to describe the costs of health care programs and to ensure that value is obtained for the money spent. This issue of Diabetes Care includes three economic analyses. The first describes the incremental costs of diabetes over a lifetime and highlights how interventions to prevent diabetes may reduce lifetime costs (1). The second demonstrates that although an expensive, intensive lifestyle intervention for type 2 diabetes does not reduce adverse cardiovascular outcomes over 10 years, it significantly reduces the costs of non-intervention−related medical care (2). The third demonstrates that although the use of the International Association of the Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups (IADPSG) criteria for the screening and diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) results in a threefold increase in the number of people labeled as having GDM, it reduces the risk of maternal and neonatal adverse health outcomes and reduces costs (3). The first report highlights the enormous potential value of intervening in adults at high risk for type 2 diabetes to prevent its development. The second illustrates the importance of measuring economic outcomes in addition to standard clinical outcomes to fully assess the value of new treatments. The third demonstrates the importance of rigorously weighing the costs of screening and treatment against the costs of health outcomes when evaluating new approaches to care.Zhuo et al. (1) linked data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey with data describing survival to calculate and compare lifetime health care expenditures for people with and without diabetes. Because the NHIS includes information on age at diagnosis of diabetes, the authors were able to estimate diabetic patients’ medical spending and …