Vox.com – The opioid epidemic cost the US $696 billion in 2018 and more than $2.5 trillion from 2015 to 2018, according to a new estimate by the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The CEA last calculated the cost of the opioid epidemic in 2015, putting the price at more than $500 billion. Using similar methodology, the agency calculated new numbers for the ensuing years.
The CEA’s estimates are multiple times larger than what some other studies found, in part because the death toll from the crisis has grown in recent years and in part because the agency is using a different methodology than other studies to try to include the broader societal costs of premature death.
For example, a 2016 study published in Medical Care estimated the total economic burden of prescription opioid overdose, misuse, and addiction at $78.5 billion in 2013. A 2017 report published by Altarum, a health care research organization, put the cost of the opioid epidemic at $95 billion for 2016. And a more recent report from the Society of Actuaries, another health care research organization, estimated that the total economic burden from 2015 through 2018 was at least $631 billion.
Vox has launched The Rehab Racket, an investigation into America’s notoriously opaque addiction treatment industry. We’re crowdsourcing patients and families’ rehab stories, with an emphasis on the cost of treatment and quality of care. If you’d like help our reporting by sharing your story, please fill out this survey.
The CEA has argued these other estimates “greatly understate [the cost] by undervaluing the most important component of the loss — fatalities resulting from overdoses.” It said other estimates look at a narrow set of costs, such as health care expenses and lost potential earnings from work, instead of the full value of all the activities people could contribute to if they didn’t die prematurely. It leveraged “conventional estimates” typically used by other federal agencies to get a fuller picture of the impact of premature deaths.
Reposted from Vox.com http://bit.ly/2CyfncN
The opioid epidemic cost $2.5 trillion over 4 years
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Last Updated: November 11, 2019 by drmoea
Vox.com – The opioid epidemic cost the US $696 billion in 2018 and more than $2.5 trillion from 2015 to 2018, according to a new estimate by the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The CEA last calculated the cost of the opioid epidemic in 2015, putting the price at more than $500 billion. Using similar methodology, the agency calculated new numbers for the ensuing years.
The CEA’s estimates are multiple times larger than what some other studies found, in part because the death toll from the crisis has grown in recent years and in part because the agency is using a different methodology than other studies to try to include the broader societal costs of premature death.
For example, a 2016 study published in Medical Care estimated the total economic burden of prescription opioid overdose, misuse, and addiction at $78.5 billion in 2013. A 2017 report published by Altarum, a health care research organization, put the cost of the opioid epidemic at $95 billion for 2016. And a more recent report from the Society of Actuaries, another health care research organization, estimated that the total economic burden from 2015 through 2018 was at least $631 billion.
Vox has launched The Rehab Racket, an investigation into America’s notoriously opaque addiction treatment industry. We’re crowdsourcing patients and families’ rehab stories, with an emphasis on the cost of treatment and quality of care. If you’d like help our reporting by sharing your story, please fill out this survey.
The CEA has argued these other estimates “greatly understate [the cost] by undervaluing the most important component of the loss — fatalities resulting from overdoses.” It said other estimates look at a narrow set of costs, such as health care expenses and lost potential earnings from work, instead of the full value of all the activities people could contribute to if they didn’t die prematurely. It leveraged “conventional estimates” typically used by other federal agencies to get a fuller picture of the impact of premature deaths.
Reposted from Vox.com http://bit.ly/2CyfncN
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