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China Has an Alzheimer’s Strategy. Without Its Own, the U.S. Faces a Fiscal Avalanche.
by Charlie Sauer
In a Monday RealClearHealth op-ed [ [link removed] ], former Trump advisor and USC Schaeffer Institute scholar Joe Grogan and Paragon Health Institute fellow Ryan Long make a point that policymakers urgently need to understand: Alzheimer’s is an economic ticking time bomb, and the U.S. needs a coordinated national response to the disease to avoid fiscal collapse.
Alzheimer’s is a fiscal threat because America’s population is aging faster than our public programs can handle. For the first time in history, adults over 65 will soon outnumber [ [link removed] ] those under the age of 18. That top-heavy demographic structure puts enormous strain on Medicare and Medicaid—programs that depend on a large working-age population to finance benefits for retirees. Alzheimer’s accelerates that pressure dramatically. Alzheimer’s patients often require years of intensive care, driving Medicaid nursing-home spending higher and pushing Medicare toward insolvency even faster.
At the same time, cognitive decline pulls millions of older Americans out of the workforce when the economy needs experienced workers to offset labor shortages. Fewer workers paying into the system, combined with more seniors drawing expensive benefits for longer periods of time, is a recipe for an entitlement crisis. If Alzheimer’s cases double by 2060—as current projections illustrate—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will face unsustainable fiscal pressure, forcing either deep benefit cuts or major tax increases.
The roadmap Grogan and Long put forward is what economist Andrew Scott calls the “longevity dividend [ [link removed] ].” They urge policymakers to focus on lengthening the cognitively healthy years of our aging population to boost productivity [ [link removed] ], reduce long-term care reliance, and prevent the insolvency of entitlement programs. Raising healthy life expectancy by just one year would be worth about $566,000 [ [link removed] ] per person.
China understands the economic danger of Alzheimer’s and has launched a national plan to address it. The U.S. has a chance to prevent its own fiscal disaster if policymakers take important steps to keep our elderly healthy longer.
Grogan and Long outline [ [link removed] ] exactly what a brighter fiscal future would require: empowering primary care physicians to spot cognitive decline early and guide patients toward lifestyle changes that preserve brain health; ensuring Medicare covers the new generation of blood tests that can detect Alzheimer’s years before symptoms appear; and slashing the Biden-era red tape that limits access to FDA-approved treatments. The newly introduced ASAP Act [ [link removed] ] makes progress by authorizing the Health and Human Services Secretary to order Medicare to cover these blood tests.
According to recent polling [ [link removed] ], 87% of voters would credit President Donald Trump with a major achievement if he waged the war on Alzheimer’s, underscoring both the policy and political upside of leading on this issue.
Lifestyle interventions are an important part of this strategy. Walking between 5,000 and 7,000 steps a day has been shown to delay Alzheimer’s decline [ [link removed] ] by an average of seven years.
Smart policy decisions today could translate into millions of lengthened, healthy lives that strengthen the U.S. economy, all while giving families more meaningful time with their loved ones. The alternative is grim: inaction will allow Alzheimer’s to accelerate U.S. fiscal instability. China has already launched a national plan to address cognitive decline. The United States must act quickly to do the same.
Charles Sauer is the president of the Market Institute, and the author of Profit Motive: What Drives the Things We Do.
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