Antidepressants don’t shorten disability leave
Kathleen Koster of Employee Benefit News reports on a newly released study which, Koster writes, found that “Even with antidepressant treatment, employee depression severity levels positively correlate with the length and cost of short term disability leave.”
The 34,000 patients whose data were studied were all “diagnosed with depression and treated with antidepressants.” Keep in mind that, in this context, STD refers to “short term disability” leave.
When compared to other chronic diseases’ effect on annual STD cost of patients, those associated with depressed individuals ($1,038 for patients with depression and $1,685 for the severely depressed) exceeded the STD costs for hypertension ($66), diabetes ($118), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ($197), and rheumatoid arthritis ($851), based on estimates by a study by Carls et al. using the same data source standardized to the same year.
In terms of days lost, 18% of patients with depression used short-term disability leave, while only 7.2% of the matched control group took advantage of the leave. Depressed patients also took more than 30 absentee days, approximately four days more on average than among matched controls. Associated costs to these days off were also disparate, with $3,925 associated with depressed employees and $3,360 with the control group.
And, from the study’s abstract:
Among antidepressant users, medical costs were not statistically different for compliant versus noncompliant patients; drug costs were higher for compliant patients, primarily because of antidepressants’ costs.
HHS: $3,700 out-of-pocket for employer coverage
Filed under: Government, Hot Health Headline, Studies
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the results of a study which found that, on average, Americans pay more than $3,700 per year for employer health coverage.
Photo by kfisto via Flickr
Sebelius set her agency’s reform-supporting agenda straight from the start, titling the report: “Hidden Costs of Health Care: Why Americans are Paying More but Getting Less.”
A few highlights:
- Out-of-pocket expenses for employer-based coverage rose 30 percent from 2001 to 2006.
- At $12,680 a year, premiums for such coverage have doubled from 2000 to 2008.
- “In 2004, only one in five people with health insurance through an employer had a co-payment of more than $25, but by 2008 the number jumped to one in three.”
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