Cost of Lung Disease

The Challenges of Lung Disease
The Triple Solution for a Healthier America is a three-part approach to tackle chronic diseases, promote a healthier life, and lower healthcare costs by focusing on Prevention, Intervention, and Innovation.

Invest in health and save our healthcare.

The Triple Solution for a Healthier America: Using Prevention to reduce chronic disease, promote a healthier life, and lower healthcare costs of diabetes and other chronic diseases The Triple Solution for a Healthier America: Using Intervention to better manage chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, promote a healthier life, and lower healthcare costs. The Triple Solution for a Healthier America: Using Innovation to reduce chronic disease and lower healthcare costs. Learn what you can do to reduce chronic disease, lower healthcare costs, and live a healthier life through personal, professional, and political involvement with the Triple Solution for a Healthier America.

Make your voice and opinions heard.
Learn more

Font Size A A A | Print Page

Chronic lung disease causes $154 billion in healthcare costs each year. This chronic disease is causing US healthcare to go up in smoke1:

  • Smokers constitute 4 out of 5 cases of lung cancer.
  • Direct and indirect costs of smoking are more than $3,000 per smoker.2
  • Lung cancer is one of the most preventable chronic diseases.

Today, people suffering from chronic diseases like lung disease face major challenges in our healthcare system:

  • Insurers are less likely to pay for cancer screenings and other preventive measures.
  • Insurers are more likely to cover costly treatments of lung cancer like chemotherapy.
  • More employers are now realizing the value of health and wellness programs, such as screenings and smoking cessation. But when left on their own, smokers or lung disease sufferers might not get the help they need. They might not be able to determine the next best step to take for their own health.

The financial and emotional effects of diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cancer are vast. They have an impact on sufferers, their loved ones, and their employers in many ways:

  • Time and energy spent treating the disease.
  • Lost productivity and/or wages due to disability or illness.
  • Reimbursement battles with insurers.

Our healthcare system is set up to treat acute illnesses and serious complications of chronic diseases. This is a reactive and costly focus. Treating the symptoms of disease and not the causes leaves tomorrow’s healthcare system carrying the burdens of:

  • Uncontrollable chronic diseases.
  • Limited treatment options for sufferers.

The Triple Solution—Prevention

Learn how programs that encourage active lifestyles, healthy choices, smoking cessation, cancer screenings, vaccination, and other ways to prevent diseases will go a long way toward lowering costs.

References:

  1. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Morbidity and Mortality: 2004 Chart Book on Cardiovascular, Lung, and Blood Diseases. Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, 2004.
  2. Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking: What it means to you. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health, 2004. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/sgr_2004/00_pdfs/SGR2004
    _Whatitmeanstoyou.pdf    . Accessed October 3, 2007.