Sleep Duration and Health Care Expenditures in the United States

To estimate the average incremental health care expenditures associated with habitual long and short duration of sleep as compared with healthy/average sleep duration.

Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data (2012; N=6476) linked to the 2010-2011 National Health Interview Survey.

Annual differences in health care expenditures are estimated for habitual long and short duration sleepers as compared with average duration sleepers using 2-part logit generalized linear regression models.

Habitual short duration sleepers reported an additional $1400 in total unadjusted health care expenditures compared to people with average sleep duration (P<0.01). After adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic factors, and health behavior factors, this difference remained significant with an additional $1278 in total health care expenditures over average duration sleepers (P<0.05). Long duration sleepers reported even higher, $2994 additional health care expenditures over average duration sleepers. This difference in health care expenditures remained significantly high ($1500, P<0.01) in the adjusted model. Expenditure differences are more pronounced for inpatient hospitalization, office expenses, prescription expenses, and home health care expenditures.

Habitual short and long sleep duration is associated with higher health care expenditures, which is consistent with the association between unhealthy sleep duration and poorer health outcomes.