In addition to the cost of care provided to persons with alcohol or drug abuse-specific or -related disorders are costs associated with administering public and private health insurance programs. The Health Care Financing Administration estimates that insurance administration represented 4.8 percent of total health expenditures in the United States. This study, therefore, calculated the additional cost of insurance administration to be 5.04 percent. Applying this value to the subtotal of medical consequences of alcohol and drug abuse, respectively, yields $636 million in insurance administration costs attributed to alcohol and $265 million attributed to drug abuse.
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