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Comment by missedthecue | Hacker News Reader

"More than 34 million people in the U.S have diabetes, and about 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed every year, according to the American Diabetes Association."

Wow. That's double the rate of a country like France. An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

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U.S Population: 328.2 Million People France Population: 67.06 Million People

The America bashing on this site really does get tiresome, especially with comments like this one that are just totally meaningless. Especially when America and France have the same percentage of diabetic people: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/E...

>Especially when America and France have the same percentage of diabetic people

Your link doesn't show that comparability.

France is the highest rate in EU at 10% for ages 15+, EU average is 6.9.

US average for ages 18+ is 13% [1] West Virginia has the highest adult rate of US states with 15.7% [2]

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/diagnose...

https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measur...

I'm using data from the World Bank which shows that Americans are far more prone to developing diabetes than most other countries.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.DIAB.ZS

France was just an example, but even your link proves my main point. It's not just diabetes. Heart disease is 2x as common in the US as in many other developed countries as well. I don't see how this is "america bashing" (of which I myself have been critical of in the past on this website). What I've presented is useful data that contributes to the discussion over healthcare costs.

France has 6% of the population diagnosed with diabetes, contrasted with 8% in the USA. Both countries are estimated to have a total rate (including undiagnosed individuals) of 10-11%.

Do you have a source for equivalent undiagnosed prevalence?

Looking around, first response on google shows US prevalence is much high higher and increasing while France is lower and decreasing

https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SH.STA.DIAB.ZS/c...

Insulin is primarily used to treat Type 1 diabetes, which is related to diet and lifestyle in a far more opaque and unknown way than Type 2 diabetes.

You cannot improve your lifestyle to prevent Type 1. However, it is epidemic across the entire western/developed world -- incidence doubles every ~6-7 years.

> An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

We have the technology. The cure is cheap. It's criminally insane that the US doesn't make life-saving or life-bettering drugs more available for free.

The market is self regulating don't worry ;)

Yes, but isn't the real 'cure' in modifying our diets so it doesn't happen in the first place? At this point, tax and put warnings on sugar and carb-rich foods. Use the revenue to subsidize healthier foods to offset the regressive effect of a sugar/carb tax. I know about food deserts and fresh food availability, but the real way to fix this issue is upstream from already having diabetes.

You seem to be confusing Type I and Type II diabetes, a pretty common error. Insulin of the sort referenced in this article is used primarily for Type I diabetes, which has little or nothing to do with sugar or carb-rich foods.

The top-level post was about combined rates in the US, so I think they were commenting on that. Type II rates in the US is about 20X that of Type I

The linked article mentions Type I specifically also: "The annual cost of insulin for people with Type 1 diabetes in the U.S. nearly doubled from $2,900 in 2012 to $5,700 in 2016, according to the most recent data available from the Health Care Cost Institute."

Insulin of this type is used primarily to treat Type I diabetes.

Right, but the top level post was talking about the different but related topic of overall diabetes prevalence.

I was talking about combined rates, not just diabetes treated with the insulin generics discussed in the link.

How is modifying our diets a "cure" for Type I diabetes?

The only "cure" I know about for Type I diabetes is insulin, the subject of TLA and as far as I can tell, the subject of GP's comment also. Your comment appears to be the first introducing the idea of diet, which suggests that maybe, as I said, you're confusing diet-related Type II diabetes (not the subject of the article) with Type I diabetes (the subject of the article).

If we could solve the type 2 diabetics it would reduce the number of people living with it by 90%.

Do France and the US use the same diagnostic criteria?

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