It seems like the only thing we can talk about these days is the rising cost of healthcare. Whether it’s in the news or in the boardroom, healthcare costs are a major topic of conversation — and with good reason. Healthcare costs have been increasing for decades with no apparent end in sight. There are many differing opinions on how exactly to decrease costs and even more debate as to the cause behind them. What is the reasoning behind the drastic increases?
While that question may have many answers, one of the most impactful is the effect of chronic conditions, which require constant care from medical professionals. Chronic conditions range in severity and attention needed to manage them, which can dramatically affect the healthcare costs associated with them.
A recent study by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization committed to making “the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous,” looked into chronic conditions in the United States and their effect on healthcare costs. Their findings were both surprising and disheartening — but they do help explain at least one reason why overall costs are increasing so dramatically.
What Is a Chronic Condition?
A chronic condition is an illness that lasts for a prolonged period, but most definitions do not specify an exact period of time. For the purposes of the RAND study, they defined the term as a “physical or mental health condition that lasts more than one year and causes functional restrictions or requires ongoing monitoring or treatment.”
By this definition, we could assume that the term “chronic conditions” includes ailments such as heart disease, high blood pressure, asthma, anemia, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and mood disorders, among many others.
What Causes (and Contributes to) Chronic Conditions?
According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), there are four major health risk factors that “cause much of the illness, suffering, and early death related to chronic diseases and conditions.” They are: