By Drew Armstrong
April 30 (Bloomberg) -- More than 70,000 Americans a year die from complications of diabetes, making it the country’s fifth-largest medical killer. While that sounds dire, Novo Nordisk A/S says the real picture may be worse.
That’s why the Bagsvaerd, Denmark-based drugmaker, the world’s top supplier of insulin, lobbied to get a provision in the U.S. health law that will push doctors to list diabetes more often as a cause of death, Bloomberg Businessweek reported in its May 3 edition. A higher toll means more public and private funding for treatment, detection and prevention, said Michael Mawby, Novo’s Washington lobbyist, in an interview.
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In coming months, regulations will spell out precisely how the new law will be applied. After that, when a patient dies from diabetes complications, such as a heart attack or a stroke, coroners and physicians will be encouraged to list diabetes on the death certificate.
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By not listing diabetes as a cause of death, physicians “certainly underestimate the impact,” said Robert Anderson, chief of the CDC’s mortality statistics branch, in a telephone interview. According to the agency’s data, diabetes is the fifth biggest killer in the U.S. after heart disease, cancer, stroke, and respiratory illnesses.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=ad044bJ3k3co