Smoking Accounts for 8.7 Percent of Annual Healthcare Spending in the U.S.

The costs on society due to smoking have increased with smoking accounting for 8.7 percent of annual healthcare spending in the U.S. Cigarette smoking generates as much as 170 billion dollars in annual health care spending in the United States.Taxpayers bear 60 percent of the cost of smoking-attributable diseases through publicly funded programs such as Medicare (45 billion dollars spending per year), Medicaid (39 billion dollars spending per year) or other government-sponsored insurance programs (23.8 billion dollars spending per year).

The analysis used data from the 2006-2010 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and 2004-2009 National Health Interview Survey. It concluded that comprehensive tobacco control programs and policies are still needed to continue progress toward ending the tobacco epidemic in the U.S.

Dr. Terry F. Pechacek, a professor of health management and policy at Georgia State, was the senior author of the study ‘Annual Healthcare Spending Attributable to Cigarette Smoking (An Update)’. It was co-authored by researchers at Georgia State University's School of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and RTI International. The study is published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Source-Medindia