Description: This is an abstract for the paper, Analysis of Costs for a Chronic Disease with Acute High Cost Episodes by Marjorie Rosenberg and Philip Farrell.

Description: Diabetes mellitus type 2 is an excellent model for assessing the setup of medical coverage in the U.S. health care system. It is a chronic disease that has genetic, behavioral and other medical causes, and causes many complications over the long term. From Financing Chronic Care Monograph, M-HB05-1.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper first explores the current state and contributing causes of obesity. It then explores the mortality and health care costs of obesity. It ends with a discussion of its management.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This article estimates the impact of obesity and diabetes on disability and mortality for those older than 65 using the 2004 National Long Term Care Survey with disability based on the Health Insurance Accountability and Portability Act's Activities of Daily Living and Cognitive Impairment triggers.

Description: Prescribers, payers, and patients must put a higher priority on the comparative cost-effectiveness of competing pharmaceutical products if society is ever going to achieve rational and affordable drug use for all. From Prescription Drugs Monograph, M-HB04-1.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 symposium January 2002. This paper evaluates age and sex specific patterns of change in underlying and multiple cause of death reports for the period 1980-1998 for 14 leading causes of death at ages 65 and older. Changes in four types of mortality measures will be analyzed: 1 underlying cause death rates 2 multiple cause death rates 3 associated cause death rates and 4 death rates based on the joint occurrences of multiple cause conditions. Implications of the results are discussed in the context of existing models for analyzing and forecasting future mortality patterns in the U.S.

Description: This is the abstract for the paper, Measuring DM Program Outcomes: The Use of Incident and Prevalent Populations by Ying Liu, MS and Michael Cousins, PhD.

Description: This paper reviews the geriatric literature to identify risk factors that could be used by insurers to identify existing or incipient frailty.

Description: Successful healthcare reform: First, it must help that must keep healthy people healthy. Second, it must help people mitigate or eliminate the health-risks associated with unhealthy lifestyle behavior choices, and Third, it must ensure the provision of evidence-based care to those who are ill.

Description: Presented at the Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper examines the relationship between the earliest stages of dementia—mild cognitive impairment—and mortality. Using data from long-term care insurance applicants, and linking this to the Social Security Master Death File, the authors focus on the classification results of two cognitive screens used at various times in the underwriting process. Applying the Cox Proportional Hazards Model as well as relative mortality ratio analysis, the authors show that the proportion of individuals classified as cognitively impaired have significantly higher relative mortality compared to those classified as cognitively intact.