The staggering cost of illness and injury

Shelley Martin

Illness, injury and premature death cost Canadians more than $5000 each annually, a newly released study indicates.

Figure.

The Health Canada report, Economic Burden of Illness in Canada, 1998, estimates that the direct and indirect costs associated with illness, injury and premature death in Canada reached $159.4 billion in 1998, or roughly $5310 for every Canadian. The 1993 total was $156.9 billion.

Direct costs, which include expenditures on hospitals, drugs, physician care and care in other institutions, accounted for 52.7% of the total, while indirect costs (the value of lost economic output associated with premature mortality, illness and injury) accounted for 47.3%. In 1993, indirect costs accounted for 54.3% of the total.

Two components of indirect costs, lost economic output associated with mortality, and morbidity due to long-term disability, were responsible for the largest single shares of total costs — 21% and 20.5%, respectively. The highest direct cost was hospital care, 17.3% of the total. In 1993, drug expenditures were responsible for a smaller share of total costs than costs associated with physician care (6.3% vs. 6.6%), but by 1998 those positions had been reversed (7.8% vs. 7.3%).

The report (ebic-femc.hc-sc.gc.ca) also examines the costs associated with specific diagnostic categories and indicates that total costs were highest for cardiovascular disease ($18.5 billion), musculoskeletal diseases ($16.4 billion) and cancer ($14.2 billion). Of costs that could be attributed according to sex, males accounted for slightly more of the total — 52.4%. For men, total costs associated with premature mortality were, at $21.2 billion, almost twice as high as total costs for women — $12.2 billion. — Shelley Martin, Senior Analyst, Research, Policy and Planning Directorate, CMA