OBJECTIVES: Pain is more prevalent than diabetes, cancer, and heart diseases. Opioids represent one of many therapeutic choices to treat acute and chronic pains. The opioid epidemic is well documented and the clinical burden of opioid use is widely discussed in academic, policy, and governmental venues. However, the economic burden of opioid abuse is not summarized in the literature. The objective of this research is to highlight economic burden of opioid crisis in the US.

METHODS: Various published articles (January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2018) from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) websites were researched for this report.

RESULTS: Prescription opioid overdose related hospital admission increased from 10.7 per 100,000 in 2001 to 25.8 per 100,000 in 2012 (2.4 fold increase). Similarly, heroin related hospital admission increased from 1.75 to 3.34 (1.9 fold increase) per 100,000 persons during this time. Opioid overdose is responsible for about 147,654 emergency room visits. The estimated direct medical cost to treat opioid abuse is estimated to be $153 million in the United States. Average annual excess health care costs for opioid abusers with private insurance ranged from $14,054 to $20,546 per patient in the US. On the other hand, average annual excess health care costs for opioid abusers with Medicaid ranged from $5,874 to $15,183 per patient. Total societal costs attributable to prescription opioid abuse were estimated at $78.5 billion in 2013. A 2017 retrospective claims database study of privately insured patients validated the previous findings and estimated that opioid abusers incur annual excess health care costs of over $14,000 per patient relative to non-abusers. Another recent estimate showed that economic burden could reach as high as $504 Billion.

CONCLUSIONS: The Opioid crisis is costly to the society and payers.