help with cost of autism over lifetime vs early intervention

P

pingster

New member
Joined
Jan 15, 2007
Messages
2
I'm not very good with math but am writing an article and was hoping that I could get some help on figuring out this problem.

If it costs $300,000 over the course of 5 years for an early intervention program and costs $3.5 million over the course of a person's lifetime to care for a person with autism who has not had early intervention, then early intervention is ___ the expected cost of caring for an individual with autism over his or her lifetime.

Thanks if you can help.
 
($300,000)/($3,500,000) = 3/35 = approx 8.6%

If it costs $300,000 over the course of 5 years for an early intervention program and costs $3.5 million over the course of a person's lifetime to care for a person with autism who has not had early intervention, then early intervention is 8.6% the expected cost of caring for an individual with autism over his or her lifetime.

you could also say less than 10% in the blank.
 
pingster said:
If it costs $300,000 over the course of 5 years for an early intervention program and costs $3.5 million over the course of a person's lifetime to care for a person with autism who has not had early intervention, then early intervention is ___ the expected cost of caring for an individual with autism over his or her lifetime.
Click to expand...
What are the instructions for this exercise? Are you filling in blanks from a list of vocabulary words or something...?

Thank you.

Eliz.
 
Eliz asks a good question. I'm just trying to make the point that even though the cost of an early intervention program is significant it's far less than what it would cost to take care of an individual with autism over the course of their lifetime if no intervention is sought.

The Harvard School of Public Health has come up with the $3.5 million number and I got the other one ($300,000) based on the annual cost of an intervention plan for these individuals, which is about $60,000 a year.

If there is fallacy in what I'm trying to do then I'll just skip the comparison. Thanks all.
 
the comparison is fine ... and, Eliz. will get over it. :wink:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top