Investigators at University of Hamburg Detail Findings in Health Insurance (The costs of hazardous alcohol consumption in Germany)

Managed Care Weekly Digest

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- Investigators discuss new findings in Health Insurance. According to news reporting originating in Hamburg, Germany, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "Hazardous alcohol consumption in Germany is a main threat to health. By using insurance claim data from the German Statutory Health Insurance and a classification strategy based on ICD10 diagnoses-codes we analyzed a sample of 146,000 subjects with more than 19,000 hazardous alcohol consumers."

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the University of Hamburg, "Employing different regression models with a control function approach, we calculate life years lost due to alcohol consumption, annual direct and indirect health costs, and the burden of pain and suffering measured by the Charlson-Index and assessed pain diagnoses. Additionally, we simulate the net accumulated premium payments over expenses in the German Statutory Health Insurance and the Statutory Pension Fund for hazardous alcohol consumers from a lifecycle perspective. In total, a,notsign39.3 billion each year result from hazardous alcohol consumption with an average loss of 7 years in life expectancy."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "Hazardous alcohol consumers clearly do not 'pay their way' in the two main German social security systems and also display a higher intangible burden according to our definitions of pain and suffering."

For more information on this research see: The costs of hazardous alcohol consumption in Germany. European Journal of Health Economics, 2017;18(6):703-713. European Journal of Health Economics can be contacted at: Springer, 233 Spring St, New York, NY 10013, USA. (Springer - www.springer.com; European Journal of Health Economics - www.springerlink.com/content/1618-7598/)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting T. Effertz, University of Hamburg, Inst Recht Wirtschaft, D-22765 Hamburg, Germany. Additional authors for this research include F. Verheyen and R. Linder (see also Health Insurance).