The True Cost of Gun Violence

Another type of welfare

According to an Urban Institute Study called The Hospital Costs of Firearms Assaults fount that about 80 percent of the cost of treating victims of gun violence in 2010 was borne in part by taxpayers.  That means taxpayers paid for victims' care either through government programs like Medicaid or through publicly-funded programs that subsidize hospital care for those who don't have insurance and can’t afford to pay.

“The victims are concentrated among young, poor males,” said the report's author, Embry Howell, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “This is the population we’re talking about and their costs are very high. It's one group that is heavily uninsured."

Hospitals in the U.S. spent $630 million in 2010 treating the victims of gun violence -- everything from minor gunshot wounds to injuries that required days-long stays -- and public funds provided most of that money. The Medicaid costs of gun violence alone that year amounted to approximately $327 million.

Notably, the report found that the average cost of a hospital visit for a gun violence victim is $14,000 more than that of the average hospital stay, due to the severity of the injuries often involved.

Although, the true economic cost of gun violence is much larger that what hospitals are spending on care. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that gun violence deaths cost the U.S. economy $37 billion and gun injuries $3.7 billion in 2005, the last year the public health agency conducted an analysis. In addition, taxpayers often end up footing the bill for social services for gun violence victims, as well as building the expensive hospital trauma units needed for their treatment.

One bit of good news:

Many of the victims of gun violence who are uninsured will see their hospital bills go down as President Obama’s health care reform law offers more low-income Americans access to Medicaid in many states.

The Bad News:

But because Medicaid is a government-subsidized program, Howell noted, the cost of gun violence to taxpayers will go up.

In other words, society bears the cost of gun violence, but that's another thing I've been sayiing all along.

The Tremendous Cost of Gun Violence

KTVU.com reports what to me seem like very conservative numbers when calculating the cost of gun violence. 

In an attempt to calculate the total costs associated with fatal and non-fatal gun-related injuries, researchers considered costs associated with criminal proceedings, lost productivity, medical care, and suffering and decreased quality of life experienced by victims.

Each non-fatal gun injury was found to cost society around $46,000 and fatal injuries cost an estimated $6.4 million, according to the report.

"Using these parameters, the cost of the 36 fatal and 133 non-fatal firearm injuries to youth in San Mateo County from 2005 to 2009 will total $234 million over time," the report said.

That's impressive enough, especially when you multiply it with the national figure. Then you're talking more than $5 billion per year.

But, doesn't the figure used seem a bit on the low side. I find it hard to believe that calculating the effect on family and considering the loss of future earnings, in addition to the immediate and more obvious costs like emergency room services and in many cases surgical operations, I find it hard to believe the $46,000 average would cover it.

Laci once provided us with what seems to me a more realistic calculation.

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.

My calculations bring us in at about $30 billion, and that's year in and year out. What's your opinion? Are these staggering numbers enough to get the attention of people? Maybe the 30,000 deaths a year has become nothing more than a statistic, like Stalin said. People may have become inured to this, as terrible as it is. Perhaps they need to think about the cost, given the economic mess the country is in, maybe this is the way to get through.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.