Gun injuries add millions of dollars to hospital costs
Besides the toll in deaths and disability, hospitalizations linked to gun injuries cost US taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year, a new study finds.
A University of Iowa analysis of nationwide data on hospital admissions between 2003 and 2013 identified 336,785 for gun injuries. Thats more than 30,000 a year, on average.
More than 60 per cent of gun injuries resulted from assaults, according to the study. Of those, 70 percent were caused by handguns. In all, 23 per cent of gun injuries were accidental and 9 per cent were self-inflicted.
Hospitalization costs for gun injuries during the study period topped $622 million a year.
While thats less than 1 percent of the $377 billion spent each year for hospital stays, gun injuries are often more costly to treat, researchers said.
Average cost of a typical hospital stay was $10,400, compared with $17,000 to $33,400 for a gun injury. Injuries from assault weapons were most costly to treat, at more than $32,000 each.
The burden fell heavily on taxpayers and the health care system. The study found 57 per cent of gun injury hospitalization costs (more than $205 million) were either paid by Medicaid or not paid at all ($155 million).
Efforts to prevent these injuries, particularly assaults and injuries caused by handguns, could reduce this cost burden, lead author Corinne Peek-Asa said in a university news release. She is a professor of environmental and occupational health.
The study also found that more than 80 percent of patients hospitalized for gun injuries were between 15 and 44 years old. The highest rate was among 15- to 24-year-olds (28.9 per 100,000). The rate for males was 18.2 per 100,000, compared with 2.1 per 100,000 for females.
The injury rate for blacks was 39.7 per 100,000, compared to 4.4 for whites and 21.1 per 100,000 for other groups.
In 2010, unintentional firearm injuries caused the deaths of 606 people.18
From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the US died from unintentional shootings.19
Over 1,300 victims of unintentional shootings for the period 20052010 were under 25 years of age.20
People of all age groups are significantly more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries when they live in states with more guns, relative to states with fewer guns. On average, states with the highest gun levels had nine times the rate of unintentional firearms deaths compared to states with the lowest gun levels. A federal government study of unintentional shootings found that per cent of such shooting deaths resulted from shots fired by children under the age of six.
The US General Accounting Office has estimated that 31 per cent of unintentional deaths caused by firearms might be prevented by the addition of two devices: a child-proof safety lock (8%) and a loading indicator (23%).
HealthDay
