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305941
In Good Times, In Bad Times – Transmission and Sharing of Health Costs, Pain and Suffering among Families with Substance Use Disorders
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Tobias Effertz
,
Institute for Commercial Law , Faculty of Business Administration, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Roland Linder
,
WINEG | Scientific Institute of Techniker Krankenkasse for the Benefit and Efficiency in Health Care, Hamburg
Frank Verheyen
,
WINEG | Scientific Institute of Techniker Krankenkasse for the Benefit and Efficiency in Health Care, Techniker Krankenkasse, Hamburg, Germany
Smoking and hazardous alcohol consumption cause illnesses and costs to the health sector. So far costs have mostly been quantified for the consumer but not for the closest social entity around him, the family. Besides the well documented phenomena of co-alcoholism and passive smoking, much remains unknown about how much costs the family of a person with substance use disorder(s) bears. To examine the "transmission" and "sharing" of pain, suffering and other psychosocial costs within the family, we analyse claim data from the German mandatory health insurance system. We are able to identify family dyads, i.e. husband-wife, father-child or mother-child in which either one person is addicted or consuming hazardously or both. The results show higher costs for spouses of dangerous consumers but only for smoking not for alcoholism in children even after controlling for individual consumption and several socioeconomic covariates. Additional costs to the health system per quarter are 76,61€ for spouses of smokers and 75,58€ for those married to risky alcohol consumers. Children bear higher costs of 109,67€ with smokers in the family but no additional health burden with risky alcohol consumers in the family. However children of alcoholics as well as smokers suffer a lot. Children´s chance of graduating from high school is significantly decreased and pain diagnoses increased when a parent is a smoker or alcoholic after controlling for several covariates and heterogeneity in the data . Future cost-benefit-analyses should incorporate this multiplication effect of cost decreases when evaluating strategies to reduce these dangerous consumption patterns.
Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health education
Biostatistics, economics
Public health or related education
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Assess the multiple dimensions of psychosocial and economic costs from the medical diagnoses of the ICD10 that the family of an alcoholic or smoker has to bear.
Evaluate the different dimensions of cost and burden from spouse´s or parent´s drinking or smoking over the lifecycle.
Assess the severity of these "quasi-external" costs to the family in contrast to the smoker/hazardous drinker.
Keyword(s): Quality of Life, Child Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have worked in the research area of cost estimation for hazardous consumption (alcohol, tobacco, obesity) for several years. The abstract reflects part of a bigger project that focusses on the complete quantification of all costs and "negative consequences" associated with hazardous consumption (i.e. costs so far not being accounted for properly due to measurement issues or a lack of valuation methods - foremost quality of life or intangible/psychosocial costs especially for the family).
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
