Asthma costs the U.S. economy more than $80 billion annually in medical expenses, missed work and school days and deaths, according to new research published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
Asthma costs the U.S. economy more than $80 billion annually in medical expenses, missed work and school days and deaths, according to new research published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
In “The Economic Burden of Asthma in the United States, 2008-2013,” researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, the most comprehensive source of data on health care use, expenditures, payment source and health insurance coverage in the U.S.
“The cost of asthma is one of the most important measures of the burden of the disease,” said Tursynbek Nurmagambetov, PhD, lead study author and health economist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Cost studies can influence health policy decisions and help decision makers understand the scale, seriousness and implications of asthma, so that resources can be identified to improve disease management and reduce the burden of asthma.”
Of 213,994 respondents to the survey over a six-year period, the study identified 10,237 people with treated asthma. The researchers defined treated asthma as having at least one medical encounter for asthma or having a prescription for at least one asthma medicine filled during a calendar year. Based on the pooled sample, researchers estimated average annual numbers and costs for the U.S. population.
Read more at American Thoracic Society
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