Asthma and lower airway disease
Costs of asthma in the United States: 2002-2007

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Background

The economic burden of asthma is an important measure of the effect of asthma on society. Although asthma is a costly illness, the total cost of asthma to society has not been estimated in more than a decade.

Objective

The purpose of this study is to provide the public with current estimates of the incremental direct medical costs and productivity losses due to morbidity and mortality from asthma at both the individual and national levels for the years 2002-2007.

Methods

Data came from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Two-part models were used to estimate the incremental direct costs of asthma. The incremental number of days lost from work and school was estimated by negative binomial regressions and valued following the human capital approach. Published data were used to value lives lost with an underlying cause of asthma.

Results

Over the years 2002-2007, the incremental direct cost of asthma was $3,259 (2009 dollars) per person per year. The value of additional days lost attributable to asthma per year was approximately $301 for each worker and $93 for each student. For the most recent year available, 2007, the total incremental cost of asthma to society was $56 billion, with productivity losses due to morbidity accounting for $3.8 billion and productivity losses due to mortality accounting for $2.1 billion.

Conclusion

The current study finds that the estimated costs of asthma are substantial, which stresses the necessity for research and policy to work toward reducing the economic burden of asthma.

Section snippets

Data

Data for calendar years 2002-2007 came from the MEPS, a large-scale nationally representative set of surveys of families and individuals and their medical providers and employers. The surveys collect detailed data on health care use, expenditures, sources of payment, and health insurance coverage. The MEPS has been conducted annually since 1996; it is cosponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Center for Health Statistics. The survey uses a complex design and

Results

Of the 206,851 observations in the pooled sample, 8,719 persons had asthma, and 198,132 persons did not have asthma (Table I). The persons in the asthma subsample tended to be younger and unmarried. They had lower education attainment, were more likely to be in poverty, and were more likely to have comorbidities.

Limitations

Higher income whites and Asians had the lowest response rates to MEPS.69 Although MEPS oversamples minorities, including Asians, we cannot be assured that our estimates are accurate for nonrespondents. The effect of possible underrepresentation of higher-income whites and Asians on the incremental cost of asthma is unclear because there is no conclusive evidence on the independent effect of income on asthma-related health expenditures.

Persons who have not used health care goods or services

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  • Cited by (0)

    Supported by the Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and supported in part by an appointment to the Research Participation Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the US Department of Energy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: S. B. L. Barnett has received research support from the OakRidge Institute for Science and Education. T. A. Nurmagambetov has declared no conflict of interest.

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