The Direct Expenditures and Indirect Costs Associated with Treating Asthma in the United States

Abstract

Asthma is one of the most commonly diagnosed chronic conditions in the U.S. The National Centers for Health Statistics (NCHS) estimated that asthma prevalence was 8.2 percent (24.6 million) of the U.S. population in 2009, of which 7.7 percent were adults and 9.6 percent were children. Within population subgroups it was higher among females, children, persons of non-Hispanic black and Puerto Rican race or ethnicity, persons with family income below the poverty level, and those residing in the Northeast and Midwest Regions. In 2008, persons with asthma missed 14.2 million work days due to their asthma. In 2007, there were 1.75 million asthma-related emergency department visits and 456,000 asthma hospitalizations. Asthma emergency visit and hospitalization rates were higher among females than males, among children than adults, and among black than white persons [1]. The current cost-of living literature gives a wide range of estimates for the direct medical costs of asthma ranging from $3.6 billion to $30.8 billion [2-7] and indirect costs ranging from $673 million to $8.2 billion [3,7,8]. Some studies have reported only direct medical care expenditures thereby underestimating the economic impact of asthma in U.S [6,9,10]. Others have recognized the importance of incorporating the indirect cost burden of asthma with direct cost estimates to gain an accurate and complete view of the societal impact of the disease [3,5,11-15]. This observed inconsistency across the costof-illness studies might be due to variation in the methods used in the calculation of costs.