Author(s)

Guvenc Kockaya, Albert Wertheimer

.

Background: It was the intention of the authors to generate a list of the top diseases responsible for the greatest financial expense in the United States. This listing would then inform policymakers as to the highest priority target conditions. With such information available, funding for the NIH could be accomplished based upon factual criteria rather than political clout or uninformed consensus. Method: The first step was a literature review to explore articles and reports which were published about the cost of illness (COI) up to December 2009. Therefore the source of the data used in this investigation was obtained from this retrospective search approach. Results: With reference to total cost for disease, first was HCVD with 475.3 billion US dollars, followed by alcohol abuse and substance at 300.6 billion US dollars, digestive diseases at 259.6 billion US dollars, cancer at 239.5 billion US dollars and mental disease at 216,6 billion US dollars. Conclusion: As has been seen, the total societal costs of the diseases do not synch with the degree of attention paid to these various disease states. Several of the diseases have very powerful and vocal support organizations that encourage attention and clinical research support. On the other hand we hear very little about efforts against allergic rhinitis or infectious and parasitic diseases.

Cost of Illness; Burden of Illness

Kockaya, G. and Wertheimer, A. (2010) What are the top most costly diseases for USA? The alignment of burden of illness with prevention and screening expenditures. Health, 2, 1174-1178. doi: 10.4236/health.2010.210172.