OBJECTIVES: To examine the resource utilization and direct costs of care of prevalent rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients using retrospective healthcare claims data. METHODS: The EGB is a national representative 1/97 sample of individuals covered by the French Health Insurance. Individuals presenting with RA (ICD-10 codes: M05-06) can be identified in the database because they benefit from a full coverage. All items of healthcare utilization and associated costs were assessed from the Health Insurance perspective for 2010. The economic burden of RA was estimated by comparing medical expenses in the RA adult (>18 years) population to a control group matched on sex and age and using non parametric Mann-Whitney tests. RESULTS: A total number of 1,296 RA patients were identified, i.e. a crude prevalence rate of 3.47/1000. The mean age was 63.3 years (± 14.8) and the sex ratio H/F was 0.33. A proportion of 39.4% of patients benefitted from additional full coverage for other co-morbibities, severe Hypertension (7.8%), NIDD (6.1%), Ischemic Heart Disease (3%), Depression (1.9%) being the most frequent. Annual medical costs of the RA population were 2 times higher than control (6,607 € versus 3,248 € p<0.0001). The main contributors to this extra cost were pharmaceuticals (+1,687€; 50.2%) and in-patient care (+903€; 26.9%). The proportion of patients with other co-morbidities leading to full coverage was not significantly different in the RA group versus control (39.4% versus 41.8% p=0.134) although Hypertension (7.8% versus 6.7% p=0.44) was significantly more frequent. Differences for Ischemic Heart Disease (3.0% versus 2.5%) and Depression (1.9% versus 1.4%) were positive but did not reach statistical significance. CONCLUSIONS: The economic burden of RA in France to the health care system is significant and apparently not associated to the presence of severe co-morbidity as identified in this database.