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Cigarette smoking adds billions to Medicare spending
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WESTPORT, Oct 04 (Reuters Health) - Cigarette smoking added $20.5 billion to the nation's Medicare tab in 1997, according to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.
A team led by Dr. Xiulan Zhang, of the UCSF Institute for Health & Aging, used economic models to determine the relationship between smoking history, smoking-related disease, self-reported health status and medical costs. The team estimated spending figures for 1993 and updated the numbers to 1997 levels based on increased Medicare expenditures.
In 1993, the total medical bill for smoking-related conditions was $72.7 million and the Medicare share of the bill was $14.2 million, the researchers report in the summer issue of Health Care Financing Review.
Dr. Zhang's group estimated that the total smoking-related cost of healthcare in 1997 was $89.2 billion. That included $20.5 billion for Medicare, $17.0 billion in Medicaid expenditures and $51.7 billion to other third-party payers and to self-payers.
In a press release, co-author Dr. Dorothy Rice of UCSF, said, "Our estimates for 1997 smoking-related costs to the Medicare program are only one out of 30 years of payments by the Medicare program for aged and disabled persons who have suffered from smoking-related diseases, suggesting that the aggregate Medicare payments over 30 years could have exceeded $600 billion in current dollars."
The authors conclude in the journal that "...cigarette smoking accounts for a substantial portion of annual state and national medical expenditures."
Health Care Financing Review 1999;20(4):1-19.
-Westport Newsroom 203 319 2700
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