It's never too late to start fighting diabetes. That's the message from the Obama administration's proposal to have Medicare pay for seniors to access lifestyle programs aimed at helping them lose weight and prevent diabetes.
Medicare will cover programs in which counselors guide seniors towards exercise and healthier food choices. According to the Centers for Disease Control, those above 65 account for roughly a quarter of the 86 million Americans categorized as "prediabetic" because of high blood sugar levels.
The effort was borne out of a 2012 pilot involving the YMCA. The organization, funded by a $12 million federal grant, ran a 15 month program in eight states targeting seniors with prediabetes. The feds determined that Medicare saved an average of $2,650 per participant as a result of the improvement to their health.
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The proposed program is largely an imitation of similar initiatives that have become popular among both private insurers and the employers that provide insurance coverage to employees. Because obesity is such a key driver of ever-rising health costs, getting workers to lose weight by eating better food and exercising more has become a top priority for those who pay for health coverage.
The new initiative could mean big bucks for a variety of nonprofit and for-profit groups that offer wellness services.
"With Medicare coverage, our work with seniors is likely to grow dramatically," Mike Payne, the head of medical affairs at Omada Health, a wellness vendor in San Francisco, told the New York Times.
Although the government has yet to specify how it will pay medical providers for such services, it is likely that the payment model will be at least partially outcome-based, rather than the fee-for-service model that Medicare has historically operated on. Payne told the Times, for instance, that Omada is paid by private insurers based on whether participants succeed in losing weight.
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