Gun injuries cost Americans $730 million a year in hospital bills

[n2doc]

Americans paid more than $6.6 billion over eight years to care for victims of gun violence, according to a new tally of hospital bills. And U.S. taxpayers picked up at least 41% of that tab.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, say the authors of a study published this week in the American Journal of Public Health. Their sum does not include the initial — and very costly — bill for gunshot victims’ care in emergency rooms. Nor does it include hospital readmissions to treat complications or provide follow-up care. The cost of rehabilitation, or of ongoing disability, is not included either.

“These are big numbers, and this is the lowest bound of these costs,” said Sarabeth A. Spitzer, a Stanford University medical student who co-wrote the study. “We were surprised” at the scale, she added.

That, arguably, makes gun-injury prevention a public health priority, Spitzer said. The GOP’s healthcare reform measure would reduce federal contributions toward Medicaid, which foots roughly 35% of the hospital bills for gunshot victims. The GOP plan would also cut payments to the hospitals that absorb much of the cost of caring for self-paying (in other words, uninsured) patients, whose hospital bills accounted for about 24% of the $730 million-per-year tab.


more
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-gun-injury-costs-20170322-story.html

[Turbineguy]

1. The old canard.

Freedom isn't free.

Getting shot is one of our most cherished freedoms!

[billh58]

2. The right-wing gun lobby

and their BFFs, the Republican Party, along with the gun huggers who have been deluded by the NRA, are all responsible for not only the staggering number of gun deaths and injuries, but also for the overwhelming medical costs of this gun violence epidemic.

From the article referenced in the OP:

To come up with their tally, Spitzer and her colleagues scoured the hospital bills of 267,265 patients across the country who were injured by guns between 2006 and 2014.

These patients were overwhelmingly male, and most of them were admitted to large, urban teaching hospitals. About 43% of the victims were treated in the South, where the proportion of uninsured patients was highest. And nationally, 30% of gunshot victims treated in hospitals during the study period were insured by Medicaid.

Is it just a coincidence that the demographics of these injuries are the same as the sales market targeted by the NRA?

“Firearm-related injuries place a particular burden on governmental payers and the poor,” the study authors wrote. In addition to the 29% of patients nationwide who were insured by Medicaid, which largely serves low-income and disabled Americans, more than 4 out of 5 of the uninsured patients “fell below the 50th income percentile.”

This group is unlikely to be able to pay their medical bills, and so these costs are often written off as losses to the hospitals that provide the care. The cost of keeping those hospitals open, in turn, is typically borne by taxpayers in the form of local tax levies or block grants to the states.

So when the right-wing 1% eliminates Medicaid and allows nationwide concealed carry by 18-year-olds, who will pay for these gun injuries and emergency room visits? The NRA, or the American public?

Until now, the most recent estimate of the cost of firearm injuries extended only through 1997 and used hospital data from only two states.

That’s very likely because in 1996, gun rights advocates on Capitol Hill began forbidding the use of federal funds “to advocate or promote gun control” and federal funds to conduct research on firearms injuries virtually dried up. While the Obama administration last year proposed a welter of initiatives to reduce gun injuries, few are likely to be funded by a GOP-led Congress.

To sum up, the right-wing gun lobby, as represented by the Trumpster, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell, wants to increase gun sales (which will increase gun injuries and deaths) by loosening gun laws, eliminate the source of medical funding which currently keeps the gun huggers alive after they shoot each other, and as with climate change and most science, stifle any fact gathering about gun violence.

In any other "civilized" society this would be seen as ethnic cleansing, or "herd culling."

[jimmy the one]

3. Compare with England & UK

Meanwhile, across the atlantic pond in the UK where handguns & assault rifles are banned & long guns strictly controlled, british gunshot injuries are costing a bit less than the $730 million per year here in america:

albeit a bit dated from 2005, could be more, but hardly approaching $730 mill:
Injuries inflicted by gun and knife crime are costing the National Health Service more than £3 million a year, a study suggests.
(at $1.25 per one english pound, that would be about $3.75 million per year in the UK).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/2480970/Gun-and-knife-crime-costing-NHS-3m-a-year.html

31 Jul 2008 The study by the Trauma Audit Research Network (Tarn) at the University of Manchester {England} looked at all penetrating trauma injuries that resulted in immediate admission to hospital for three or more days, or death within 93 days.
A total of 1,365 patients with such injuries were admitted to half of all hospitals - 121 - in England and Wales between January 2000 and December 2005.
Firearm injuries, accounting for nearly a fifth of cases studied, cost an average of £10,307 per patient

Adjusting for England/Wales/Scottish population of ~60 million requires multiplying by ~5, so adjust the $3.75 mill to about $20 million UK, $730 million America.

Guns, really doing great work in America. Keeping hospitals working overtime.

[billh58]

4. Great research!

Thanks for all you do...