The total cost of caring for people with health problems caused by cigarette smoking is about $72.7 billion per year, according to health economists at the University of California. "You expect a figure of this magnitude for the impact of smoking on health care, when you consider that one in five deaths per year is due to cigarette use," said the study's author. Smoking accounted for 11.8 percent of all medical expenditures in the U.S.
Analysis of Philip Morris study on economics of tobacco use.
Research summary. Estimates that tobacco products cost employers $47 billion dollars in 1990.
Research that followed over 80,000 employees for over 2 years finds smoking has significant costs for employers, even among younger workers.
Very short factsheet, but all sources cited.
Cost of tobacco in Canada from worker absenteeism, fires, and lost income due to premarure death.
Short factsheet measures the UK cost of tobacco products in different ways.
The cost of smoking in terms of healthcare at one Irish hostpial is estimated: the hospital's budget was about £177 million per year, and about half the 500 to 600 patients were there because of smoking.
Research paper summarizes qualitative and quantitative human and financial tolls from smoking, ranging from cigarette burns, to cigarette ignited fire disasters, to caring for dying smokers and replacing their financial and social contributions to their spouses, children, grandchildren, and the tax base.
Conclusions: If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs. The New England Journal of Medicine, October 9, 1997.
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