The opioid epidemic could have cost the US governments $ 37.8 billion in tax revenue

According to Penn State researchers, the opioid epidemic may have cost up to $ 37.8 billion in the United States and US federal governments, due to opioid-related job losses .

In addition, the researchers found that Pennsylvania was one of the states with the most revenue losses, with about $ 638.2 million lost in revenue and sales taxes. The study examined the data between 2000 and 2016.

Joel Segel, badistant professor of health policy and administration, said the findings, recently published in the journal Medical care… could help governments hoping to make up for lost revenue.

"This is a cost that we may not have thought about explicitly before, and a cost that governments could potentially try to recover," Segel said. "Rather than focusing on the cost of treating people with opioid use disorder, one could consider a potential benefit to health, the return to active life and the professional reintegration of people."

Previous research estimated that in 2016, nearly 2.1 million Americans were suffering from an opioid use disorder and that about 64,000 deaths were due to overdose of opioids. According to the National Institute for Combating Drug Abuse, there have been 2,235 overdose deaths related to opioids in Pennsylvania alone.

Segel said that although previous studies have examined the cost of the opioid epidemic in terms of drug treatment and other medical costs, his other researchers and he were interested in explore other costs that may not have been captured before.

"We wanted to take a systematic approach to think about some of the lost tax revenue if a person was unable to work because of opioid use," Segel said. "This could be an important consideration for state or federal budgets."

The researchers used data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, as well as information from a previous study that estimated the decline in the labor force due to the opioid epidemic. They used the National Bureau of Economic Research's TAXSIM calculator to estimate tax revenue losses.

After badyzing the data, the researchers found that between 2000 and 2016, the number of people active in the labor market had decreased by 1.6 million, of which about 68,000 in Pennsylvania. There were approximately 180,000 overdose deaths, including about 6,100 in Pennsylvania.

In addition, researchers estimated that $ 11.8 billion in tax losses were incurred by state governments and $ 26 billion in taxes collected by the federal government as a result of the shrinking labor force. For state governments, this included the loss of revenue from sales tax and income tax. The losses incurred by the federal government were entirely due to the loss of tax revenue.

Segel said the results help show the benefit of treating people with opioid use disorder, and should be taken into account when treatment programs are considered. and evaluated.

"The state of Pennsylvania has developed innovative programs, and our results need to be taken into account because their implementation is being considered," Segel said. "Not only are treatment programs beneficial to the individual and society, but if you think about the total cost of these treatment programs, future income tax revenues could help offset some of that."