The costs of hazardous alcohol consumption in Germany

Tobias Effertz (), Frank Verheyen and Roland Linder
Additional contact information
Tobias Effertz: Universität Hamburg
Frank Verheyen: WINEG, Wissenschaftliches Institut der TK für Nutzen und Effizienz im Gesundheitswesen
Roland Linder: WINEG, Wissenschaftliches Institut der TK für Nutzen und Effizienz im Gesundheitswesen

The European Journal of Health Economics, 2017, vol. 18, issue 6, No 5, 703-713

Abstract: Abstract 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. 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, €39.3 billion each year result from hazardous alcohol consumption with an average loss of 7 years in life expectancy. 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.

Keywords: Hazardous alcohol consumption; Cost-of-illness; Cost of substance abuse; Pain and suffering; Insurance claim data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D6 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10198-016-0822-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eujhec:v:18:y:2017:i:6:d:10.1007_s10198-016-0822-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10198/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10198-016-0822-1

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J.-M.G.v.d. Schulenburg

More articles in The European Journal of Health Economics from Springer, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().