In the new budget that was agreed to earlier this week, Alzheimer’s Disease research received a huge boost with $350 million being allotted for 2016. This represents a huge step forward from the previous year in which only $25 million was given and critics had a field day hammering Congress over the lack of funding. Currently, the disease afflicts about 7 million Americans with the number expected to surge as the nation ages to over 11 million in the next decade. This funding appears to be in the nick of time since some projections place the future burden of caring for those with the disease as taking up 1/3 of all Medicare/Medicaid funds. Proponents argue that spending money now for a cure or treatment will save hundreds of billions in the future and allow the money to be spent on more pressing issues. However, this new round of funding is only the first step since the National Institute of Health is estimated to need $2 billion per year to maximize efforts to find a treatment. But the first steps are always the hardest and this represents a major commitment to what will hopefully be an all out effort to fight this terrible affliction.
See Tara Bahrampour, Proposed budget for Alzheimer’s research may rise by over 50 percent, Washington Post, December 16, 2015.
Special thanks to Lewis Saret for bringing this article to my attention.
