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January 5, 2009Substance abuse adds millions to Medicaid's total health care costs |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: People with substance abuse disorders cost Medicaid hundreds of millions of dollars annually in medical care, suggesting that early interventions for substance abuse could not only improve outcomes but also save substantial amounts of money, according to a comprehensive study that examined records of nearly 150,000 people in six states. The most striking finding, Clark said, was that as the patients with substance abuse disorders got older, the medical care costs increased at a far higher rate than behavioral health costs. Clark's study, "The Impact of Substance Use Disorders on Medical Expenditures for Medicaid Beneficiaries with Behavioral Health Disorders," published December 30 in the online edition of the journal Psychiatric Services, was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (SAPRP). The study found that 29 percent of the Medicaid patients were diagnosed with substance abuse disorders in the six states, ranging from a low of 16.1 percent in Arkansas to 37.1 percent in New Jersey and 39.6 percent in Washington. For people with substance abuse disorders, the six states alone paid $104 million more for medical care and $105.5 million more for behavioral health care than for those patients who did not have an alcohol or drug abuse diagnosis. The researchers said possible explanations for the higher medical costs included generally higher prevalence of physical illness among older people, the cumulative health impact of long-term substance abuse, greater reluctance among older adults to seek addiction treatment in specialty settings, and more severe chronic disease among older adults with addictions. All six states showed that medical care and behavioral health care costs were higher with those who abused drugs and alcohol compared to those who did not. In New Jersey, people classified as having severe mental illness and a substance abuse disorder cost a median of $5,345 for behavioral health, compared to a median of $1,601 for a person without a substance abuse disorder.
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