[blindlaw] The Census does not track the blind

[James Pepper]

Stats:

Ok the 54 billion figure came from teh CDC but they changed their website
but we can reconstruct those figures from other sources.  The CDC keeps
track of who is blind for what reason and if you go by their figures there
are a lot more blind people than the government seems to be acknoledging.
Remember these figures include constructions costs and everything for making
things accessible on top of the direct costs to the government.

The figure is $566,000 of added cost for each blind person to take care of
them for their lifetime, over and above any other costs.  I thought it was
$266,000 but it was $566,000.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dd/vision3.htm#cost  This report was in 2001 and
it estimated that the costs of all the people born blind in 2000 would have
a lifetime cost of 2.5 billion for that year.

The CDC keeps track of eye diseases and statistics of people 40 and over.

 17.2% of that population will get cataracks which is 20.5 million people.
Macular degeneration leading to blindness is only 1.5% of the population and
that is aropund 1.7 million people in this age range while macular
degeneration leading to partial blindness is 6.7% of this over 40 population
or 7.3 million people.  Then you have glaucoma which affects 1.9% or 2.2
million people.   http://www.nei.nih.gov/eyedata/pbd_tables.asp

Diabetic Retinopathy affects 4 million people in our entire population.

So there is a need for a census to figure out just how much we are spending
on this and how to improve these vast expenditures.

James G. Pepper