Heart Disease Treatment Costs $100 Billion per Year in the US

It costs approximately $100 billion to treat cardiovascular disease in the United States each year, with most of those expenses going toward hospital inpatient stays and medication, according to a statistical brief from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

The data, which come from the 2022 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Household Component, show a mean annual cost per adult with heart disease of $4,900. Medicare coverage account for the highest share of payment at 57.6%, followed by private insurance at 24.2%, Medicaid at 8%, and out-of-pocket or other sources responsible for the remainder.

An estimated 7.8% of all adults aged 18 and older received some treatment for heart disease in 2022, the survey showed. Men outpaced women in this regard, at 8.4% versus 7.2%.

As expected, people aged 65 and older were more impacted than those in their 40s, 50s, and early 60s (22.8% vs 6%). By race/ethnicity, more non-Hispanic white patients received treatment for cardiovascular disease, at about 10% of the population compared with 6.3% of Hispanic Black adults and 3.9% of non-Hispanic Asian and Hispanic adults, respectively.

Compared with middle- or high-income families, more poor- and low-income families had any heart disease treatment. By region, the Northeast had the highest percent of adults receiving any heart disease treatment and the West had the lowest.

The average cost of an inpatient hospital stay per patient was $21,560, which amounted to 46.1% of total expenses, followed by prescribed medications at 20.5%, outpatient hospital visits at 11.3%, office-based visits at 9.9%, home-health services at 9.1%, and emergency department visits at 3.1%.

Office-based visits for cardiovascular disease incurred the lowest mean cost—$830—among all services analyzed. Across six categories of CVD services, mean costs were higher than median costs because a relatively small proportion of adults had very high expenses.