1Department of Health Policy and Management, Medical College, Cheju National University, Jeju, Korea. jsunha@yumc.yonsei.ac.kr 2Institute for Health Promotion, Graduate School of Public Health, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. 3Department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion, Graduate School of Public Health, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. 4Metabolic Syndrome Research Initiative, Seoul, Korea. 5Department of Preventive Medicine, Medical College, Cheju National University, Jeju, Korea. 6Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA. 7Korean Association of Smoking and Health, Seoul, Korea.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to determine the population-attributable risk (PAR) and estimate the total medical expenditure of the Korean National Health Insurance (KNHI) due to smoking. METHODS: We used data from the Korean Cancer Prevention Study of 1,178,138 Koreans aged 30 to 95. These data were available from 1992 to 2003 and covered a long-term follow-up period among the Korean population. RESULTS: The total medical expenditure of KNHI related to smoking increased by 27% from $324.9 million in 1999 to $413.7 million in 2003. By specific diseases, smokingattributable KNHI medical expenditure was the highest for lung cancer ($74.2 million), followed by stroke ($65.3 million), COPD ($50.1 million), CHD ($49 million) and stomach cancer ($30 million). A total of 1.3 million KNHI patients were suffering from smoking-related diseases in 2003. We predicted rises in total KNHI medical expenditure related to smoking to $675.1 million (63% increase compared with that of 2003) and in the total number of KNHI patients suffering from smoking-related diseases to about 2.6million (an approximate 100% increase compared with those in 2003) in 2015. CONCLUSIONS: We found a substantial economic burden related to the high smoking prevalence in South Korea.
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