Unless you’re a professional weirdo, this probably isn’t a question that you’ve thought much about. Lucky for you I am that kind of strange, and decided to look into this issue. As it turns out, the costs both at the micro and macro levels lead us to some very interesting statistics. In this article we will cover the costs for gunshot wounds, commonalities between them, and which firearm wound types are most expensive to treat.
Before we get right into the weeds, I want you to understand a few things. First, this article will be referencing various scientific papers on the cost of treating gunshot wound patients. While these costs have been increasing in the last few years, it’s hard to nail down what we mean by total costs. Does this include only emergency room treatment? Is rehab included? What about long term care for those disabled?
Where able, I will cover the details of these issues, and as you will see there are some interesting conclusions we can draw about crime, and the efficacy of certain firearms based solely on the cost of treating their injuries. We can also see just how likely you are to be killed if you happen to be shot.
Without further ado.
The Individual Cost of a Gunshot Wound
We all know healthcare is incredibly expensive. The longer you stay in the hospital the more likely you are to incur heavy fees. This study examined the individual cost for a gunshot wound admission (over the last 12 years) in two level one trauma centers in Los Angeles.
They determined that the median individual gunshot wound cost $12,612. These patients had a median stay in the hospital of 3 days. They were also 20% more likely to require admission into the ICU.
Interestingly enough, the researchers compared gunshot wound costs to other serious injuries like stab wounds and blunt force trauma. They found that gunshot wounds were nearly twice as expensive. These other types of wounds resulted in a 2 day stay, and a median cost of $6,195. While this is interesting it looks like these numbers might be on the low end.
This study examined a nation wide sample of gunshot wound victims from 2005-2016. They found that the average cost was between $25,000 – $33,000. They also noted that specialized surgical procedures tended to drive up the costs. It was interesting that the overall risk of dying from being shot declined from 8.6-7.6% during the study interval. This leads us to our next question. Who are these victims, and how common are these injuries?
Gunshot Wound Victim Characteristics
In this medical paper, researchers reviewed admissions to hospitals for gunshot wounds between 2004-2013. They found that each year roughly 30,000 people are admitted, complaining of gunshot wounds. Men are 9 times as likely to be admitted to a hospital than women are, but women are less likely to die.
There are twice as many African Americans admitted than non-Hispanic whites. Both of these groups had the same chances of dying from their injuries. Overall, 63% of these admissions were a result of assaults, and accidents were the next highest admission cause at 23%. Suicide accounted for 8.3% of total admissions, but they were a whopping 32% of all gunshot wound deaths.
Interestingly enough, these researchers found that handgun wounds were the most lethal form of gunshot wound with an 8.4% mortality rate. We’ll see later on that this is most likely not going to be the case when compared with rifles and long gun wounds. The researchers did note that terrorist victims and people that die at the hand of police are a very small minority of gunshot wound victims.
These researchers estimated that the median price of admission for a single gunshot wound victim was between $30,000- $56,000 dollars. While these stats are interesting, they only give us a glimpse in to the true characteristics of gunshot victims.
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Gunshot Wound Characteristics by Demographic
To truly understand gun violence, we need to look at a very detailed study. This study was conducted between 2003-2013 and looked at over 300,000 gunshot wound admissions to determine what commonalities there were, as well as what types of weapons caused the most devastating, and expensive wounds.
They found that there was an annual rate of 10.1 admissions per 100,000 people in the US. While this might fluctuate in a given year, they noted that it remained fairly stable across the reporting period. More than 80% of hospitalizations were for people between the ages of 15-44. They also noted that males were 9 times more likely to be admitted for this, and African American populations were 10 times more likely than white populations to suffer from gunshot wounds when admitted.
They found that 60% of admission were for assaults, and 70% of the injuries were from handguns. The researchers found that the average cost was highest for “assault weapons” at an average cost of $32,237. While these stats are interesting, and seem to agree with other research, there were quite a lot of stats in that study so I will list them for you here.
Gunshot Wound Statistics, Demographics, and Causes
- In the US for 2015, 17% of all injury deaths were caused by firearms
- Among youth aged 15-24, 29.6% of all deaths were firearm injuries
- For African American youth, firearms were the leading cause of injury death, 58.6% of all deaths
- For people aged 65 and older 38.8% of firearm injuries were self harm
- Amongst African Americans and Hispanics 70% of patients were admitted due to firearms assault
- The average cost of a suicide by firearm was roughly $24,000.
Discussion
You can see that these costs are drastic for individuals but they are even higher at a macro level. The estimated annual cost for all firearms injuries is $622,000,000 on average. As high as this is, it represents less than 1% of the costs of all annual hospital stays.
Researchers estimate that roughly one third of these gunshot victims are uninsured which generally means that the local and state governments pick up the costs of this expensive medical treatment, to the tune of hundreds of millions annually. Gun violence isn’t just a medical problem, it is also an economic one!
When you look at these statistics, it becomes clear that firearms violence affects young people most of all, and young people of color horrifically so. Yet, when examined across the US, gun violence is much different in specific regions.
In an interesting article by Recoil Magazine, they found that inner cities suffer a huge number of gun homicides and relatively few suicides. When you look at rural areas, you find the opposite. Rural areas suffer much more from gun suicide than homicide. I encourage you to read their article as it breaks down these statistics by county.
Final Thoughts
While this article has tangentially covered the topic of gun violence, it is clear that it’s not a monolithic problem. Mental health, and death by firearm suicide remains a large problem in many areas of the country. Moreover, assaults by firearms are all too common in impoverished inner city areas.
I encourage you to read this article as it covers some more specifics on who exactly is most at risk to be shot. You’ll find that the average homicide victim in some areas had been arraigned for serious crimes more than 10 times prior to their demise. While this doesn’t mean they don’t deserve justice, it does indicate the kind of lives some of these folks are leading.
I think all sane people would like to reduce gun violence, both suicide and homicide. The best way you can do that at an individual level is to secure your firearms, as there are an astonishing number of children killed each year by unsecured weapons. Lastly, I always recommend you seek quality training and maintain your currency with firearms should you choose to be a firearms owner.
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The average ICU charge is about $900 per hour, for a profit of $850 per hour. Normal ICU, in room attendance is 5 to 15 minutes per hour. If you are in the ICU, and request a popcicle, you will be billed about $250. So wholesale, a bullet wound costs about $1000 in time, and equipment. Ambulance costs billed, are $200 a minute. Cost, $10 a minute. Medivac costs billed, are about $600 a minute, actual costs are about $100 a minute.
Very interesting!
Could you reference the source for your numbers?
When I retired as a critical care nurse more than 10 years ago I was making more than $50 an hour. Normal staffing was for 2:1 patient to nurse ratio (1:1 if unstable.). Your 5-15 minutes per hour come from experience or a study?
How are you calculating 24 hour monitoring? Ventilated patients- where is the respiratory therapist cost? What about the 24 hour pharmacy staffing? Physical therapy? That’s just critical care. Hidden costs of care?
I dispute your numbers.
However, insurance company cost/skimming is a cost you are not highlighting.
Now — let’s refocus on Jake’s excellent discussion of personal and societal costs of gun shot wounds. These are some really sobering numbers.
Clink on the links for each study. They are the sources.
Hey Jake. I don’t dispute your review of the social and individual costs of a gun shot wound. It was excellent. The high cost of health care for any cause is too high. (I’m a big fan of moving away from a private insurance system to a more universal system (another topic. I digress))
I also reviewed your references and they were helpful in illuminating the details of your article. I get it.
However, I do not see any documentation of Lewis Booker’s claims. Both from an experiential and from a quick look at the literature POV I disagree with Booker.