Health Expenditures

Women who traveled out of state for abortion care were more likely to incur catastrophic health expenditures, which were associated with increased symptoms of anxiety and depression, survey data show.

Annual expenditures for diabetes medications more than tripled in the U.S. from 2011 to 2020, and the increase played a role in an overall rise in money spent on prescription drugs, according to study findings.

Patients who had regular primary care visits with the same physician had greater savings in Medicare expenditures and a reduced risk for ED visits and hospitalizations — especially as their care became more complex — a recent study found.

Cancer drugs without documented clinical benefit are being used increasingly and account for a substantial amount of health care spending, according to results of two studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Researchers estimated that the health care costs of 13.6 million U.S. adults with a sleep disorder total approximately $94.9 billion annually.

In a CDC study, total annualized medical expenditures in U.S. workers from 2011 to 2015 were $7 billion for asthma-related events and $5 billion for COPD-related events, according to data published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Approximately 2.2 million, or 13%, of patients with atherosclerotic CVD experience cost-related nonadherence to prescribed medication in the U.S. and approximately 9% take lower than the prescribed dose, according to findings published in Circulation.

A cohort of older veterans with obesity who underwent bariatric surgery experienced an initial drop in pharmacy-related costs when compared with matched adults who did not undergo surgery, but overall health care costs remained comparable between groups during 10 years of follow-up, according to findings published in JAMA Surgery.

LAS VEGAS — Multi-digit finger replantation may be more cost-effective compared with single-digit replantation, according to results presented at the American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Meeting.

The estimated cost of waste in the United States health care system ranged from $760 billion to $935 billion annually, or about 25% of total health care spending, according to an analysis published in JAMA.