Healthcare Costs in the United States by Demographic Characteristics and Comorbidity Status

Current, real-world healthcare cost information is needed to project future expenditures and inform policy. We estimated the healthcare costs for adults in 2019 in the United States by age, sex, race/ethnicity, geographic region, and comorbidity.

We aggregated and summarized the healthcare costs in 2021 US dollars using claims data derived from Optum's deidentified Clinformatics® Data Mart Database, which includes inpatient, outpatient, and prescription claims for commercial and Medicare Advantage beneficiaries nationwide.

A total of 9 227 901 adults were included in the analysis. The largest group represented was 71 to 75 years old (13%), female (53%), White (68%), received care in the South (41%), and had commercial health insurance (56%). There was a positive relationship between healthcare cost and age. Females had a 1.3-fold multiplicative increase in costs than males (95% CI 1.33-1.34). There were 92.5% of individuals who had health claims in the Northeast, 89.6% in the Midwest, 88.9% in the South, 77.1% in the West, and 12.7% with unknown geographic region. Patients with severe renal failure, heart failure, or metastatic cancer incurred the highest mean yearly costs ($139 844, $113 031, and $85 299, respectively). Metastatic cancer and severe renal failure were associated with a 5.3-fold multiplicative increase in costs than not having these conditions, after adjusting for potential confounders (95% CI 5.26-5.41 and 4.98-5.16, respectively).

We identified patient characteristics and medical conditions that are associated with high healthcare cost burden and could benefit from tailored interventions. We provided detailed cost estimates to aid healthcare modeling, cost projection, and cost-minimizing interventions.