Medicare and Medicaid pay nearly 85 percent of the national hospital bill for COPD

Main Category: COPD
Also Included In: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 07 Nov 2005 - 13:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) - a condition associated with smoking and therefore largely preventable -- was the 5th most common cause of hospitalization for Americans over 65 years of age in 2003, according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Treating the disease cost Medicare roughly $6.6 billion, or nearly two-thirds of the total national hospital bill ($10.2 billion) for COPD.

Medicaid paid nearly $2 billion, or one-fifth , of the total hospital bill for COPD. Private health insurance plans paid $1.3 billion, or 13 percent of the bill. Overall, COPD accounted for more than 620,000 hospitals stays in U.S. community hospitals. Hospital charges do not include physician fees.

This information was produced using HCUPnet, an on-line query system that provides access to health statistics and information on hospital stays from AHRQ's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). This project comprises a family of health care databases and related software tools developed through a federal-state-industry partnership and sponsored by AHRQ. HCUP includes the largest set of publicly available databases on all patients in the United States, regardless of type of insurance or whether the patients had insurance. To access HCUPnet, go to hcup.ahrq.gov/HCUPnet.asp.

For more information, contact Bob Isquith at bisquith@ahrq.gov or (301) 427-1539.

• Additional
• References
• Citations