The High Price of the Opioid Crisis, 2021
Increasing access to treatment can reduce costs
Untreated opioid use disorder (OUD), a chronic brain disease, has a serious cost to people, their families, and society because of increased health care spending, criminal justice issues, and lost productivity.
Each year, opioid overdose, misuse, and dependence account for:
$35 billion in health care costs1Patients who experienced an opioid overdose accounted for $1.94 billion in annual hospital costs.2 |
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$14.8 billion in criminal justice costs3Each dollar invested in addiction treatment reduces drug-related crime, theft, and criminal justice costs by $4-$7.4 |
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$92 billion in lost productivity5The losses stem from premature death due to overdose, “productive hours” lost to OUD, and opioid-related incarceration. |
Nearly 70,000 Americans died of an opioid overdose in 2020.6 Improving access to evidence-based treatments for OUD has been associated with savings of $25,000 to $105,000 in lifetime costs per person.7
Endnotes
- C. Florence, F. Lui, and K. Rice, “The Economic Burden of Opioid Use Disorder and Fatal Opioid Overdose in the United States, 2017,” Drug and Alcohol Dependence 218 (2021), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33121867/.
- Premier Inc., “Opioid Overdoses Costing U.S. Hospitals an Estimated $11 Billion Annually,” news release, Jan. 3, 2019, https://www.premierinc.com/newsroom/press-releases/opioid-overdoses-costing-u-s-hospitals-an-estimated-11-billion-annually.
- Florence et al., “The Economic Burden of Opioid Use Disorder.”
- National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Principles of Effective Treatment,” accessed July 8, 2021, https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/principles-drug-addiction-treatment-research-based-guide-third-edition/principles-effective-treatment.
- Florence et al., “The Economic Burden of Opioid Use Disorder.”
- National Center for Health Statistics, “Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts,” accessed July 16, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm.
- M. Fairley et al., “Cost-Effectiveness of Treatments for Opioid Use Disorder,” JAMA Psychiatry 78, no. 7 (2021), https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2778020.