Cost of gun violence: hospital charges for 100,000 shot annually reach $2.8bn
More than 100,000 people are shot each year in the US at a total cost of $2.8bn in hospital charges, a study published on Monday has found. If lost wages and hospital charges are considered together, the authors said, the annual cost of shootings in the US could be as high as $45bn.
The study was published in the journal Health Affairs, hours after the deadliest mass shooting in American history, at a music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday. At least 58 people were killed and 515 wounded.
Although mass shootings represent the most high-profile gun violence in the US, homicide, suicide and everyday violence kill many more. The study, which looked at more than 150,000 patients in a national database of emergency department visits between 2006 and 2014, is one of just a handful on American gun violence published each year, because of a lack of congressional funding.
“The numbers are really, really startling,” said Faiz Gani, one of the authors of the study and a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine department of surgery. “Previous studies just focused on the mortality, but ignored the larger chunk of people who don’t die but are affected by this issue.
“That really struck me as something that was really alarming. There are 100,000 people who are affected and we’re not really doing anything.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...es-johns-hopkins-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
More than 100,000 people are shot each year in the US at a total cost of $2.8bn in hospital charges, a study published on Monday has found. If lost wages and hospital charges are considered together, the authors said, the annual cost of shootings in the US could be as high as $45bn.
The study was published in the journal Health Affairs, hours after the deadliest mass shooting in American history, at a music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday. At least 58 people were killed and 515 wounded.
Although mass shootings represent the most high-profile gun violence in the US, homicide, suicide and everyday violence kill many more. The study, which looked at more than 150,000 patients in a national database of emergency department visits between 2006 and 2014, is one of just a handful on American gun violence published each year, because of a lack of congressional funding.
“The numbers are really, really startling,” said Faiz Gani, one of the authors of the study and a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine department of surgery. “Previous studies just focused on the mortality, but ignored the larger chunk of people who don’t die but are affected by this issue.
“That really struck me as something that was really alarming. There are 100,000 people who are affected and we’re not really doing anything.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...es-johns-hopkins-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
