Why the Diabetes Cost Reduction Act (DCRA) is Important to Ohio

About 380,000 Ohio residents that have diabetes with insurance, or about 85%, will be impacted by the DCRA in Ohio.* Ohio residents with diabetes do not have their diabetes needs covered by their state regulated insurance carriers as a basic benefit of insurance.

Diabetes in Ohio

• More than one million Ohioans have diabetes. More than 813,000 Ohio adults have been diagnosed with diabetes and an estimated 267,000 additional Ohio adults have the disease and don�t know it.* National data for persons less than 18 years of age indicates that every one in 523 children has diabetes.** More than 18,000 Ohioans die each year from diabetes complications.*

Prevention works

• Evidence based research repeatedly demonstrates that tight control of a person�s blood sugar drastically reduces the incidence of severe and costly diabetes-related complications. Tight control can only be maintained through diabetes education, medication, good nutrition and frequent and regular blood sugar monitoring.



• The necessary equipment and supplies for tight diabetes control include blood glucose strips, lancets, a blood glucose monitor, insulin and an insulin delivery system (like an insulin pump, injector pen or syringes). Currently, none of these are required coverage by Ohio�s state-regulated insurance companies.

The DCRA Will Save Money and Lives

• The DCRA will save state Medicaid dollars. For example, the Ohio Medicaid program spends nearly $13 million caring for people with diabetes who are experiencing End Stage Renal Disease and require dialysis. If these patients had been able to stave off kidney failure due to unmanaged diabetes, they may not have become disabled and diabetes would be much less of a burden on the state Medicaid program.



• Implementation of the DCRA will cost about 10 cents per day. It will save millions of dollars in productivity, emergency room visits, hospital stays and surgery. Recent studies have shown that for every $1 spent on diabetes self management education, $8.76 is saved.***



• A study released by the South Carolina Budget and Control Board in 2003 found that patients who took a diabetes education course had $2,324 less in medical claims per year than patients with similar symptoms and problems who did not go through Diabetes Chronic Disease workshops.



• Since Florida passed its DCRA law in 1995, diabetes-related amputation rates have dropped 21 percent. (Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, 2002)



• In 2003 the Utah Department of Insurance studied the state�s DCRA and reported that it did not increase comprehensive claims costs more than 0.1 percent.



• Today, there are 63,000 more people with diabetes in Ohio than one year ago. The rates of diabetes in Ohio are increasing at nearly 10 percent annually. Ohio is facing a critical health care crisis which will only get worse as it struggles to support the increasing number of people who are sick and dying from diabetes.

The Diabetes Cost Reduction Act: Saving Dollars and Saving Lives

*Ohio Diabetes Prevention and Control Program, Ohio Department of Health, 2005.
** CDC/NIDDK, 2001
***CDC, 2005

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