re: #232 Lidane

No, ownership isn’t a disease, but use of firearms most certainly is. It has a real and tangible medical cost that adds up and tests the health care delivery system.

The health care and economic costs of gun violence in the US are equally staggering. According to the Public Services Research Institute in 2008, firearm homicide and assault cost federal, state and local governments $4.7 billion annually including costs for medical care, mental health, emergency transport, police, criminal justice and lost taxes. They also state that when lost productivity, lost quality of life, and pain and suffering are added to medical costs, estimates of the annual cost of firearm violence range from $20 billion to $100 billion. According to the National Center for Disease Control, the cost of firearm fatalities is the highest of any injury-related death. In fact, the average cost of a gunshot related death is $33,000, while gun-related injuries total over $300,000 for each occurrence. Unlike car crash victims who are privately insured, roughly 80% of gunshot victims are uninsured. In the Journal of the American Medical Association (June 14, 1995), researchers found that private health insurance pays for the majority of the treatment of firearm-related injuries though it may cover only about one-fourth of the total injury victims. As a result taxpayers and insurance holders are unfairly burdened by the enormous and largely preventable health care cost associated with firearm violence.

Going back further, a rigorous study from 1999 (so the dollar figures need to be adjusted to present value - meaning they’d be much higher now), found that the “… mean medical cost per injury of about $17,000, the 134,445 (95% confidence interval [CI], 109,465-159,425) gunshot injuries in the United States in 1994 produced $2.3 billion (95% CI, $2.1 billion–$2.5 billion) in lifetime medical costs (in 1994 dollars, using a 3% real discount rate), of which $1.1 billion (49%) was paid by US taxpayers. Gunshot injuries due to assaults accounted for 74% of total costs.”

It might not be a disease, but doctors are sure seeing a whole lot of it in their emergency rooms nationwide.