The Cost of AIDS
How much has AIDS cost America? Below are some numbers from a 1995 LA Times article, “The Economic Cost of AIDS”. I searched for something more recent, but couldn’t find anything, despite a plethora of articles on the cost of AIDS in Africa. If one is looking for the costs of homosexuality the cost of AIDS is obviously important, which is perhaps why so little is written on it. It would be interesting to know the monetary transfer from non-homosexuals as a group to homosexuals. At any rate, here are a few old figures:
* AIDS will have siphoned off an estimated $81 billion to $107 billion from the U.S. economy by 2000. Costs of the epidemic are already immense: The disease has run up a tab of $75 billion to date, with $3 billion to $6 billion a year being spent on new infections each year
* Two-thirds of companies with 2,500 to 5,000 workers and one in 12 small businesses have employed someone with HIV or AIDS. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention theorize that the impact of HIV on these businesses amounts to about $32,000 over five years per infected employee.
* AIDS-related claims cost the life and health insurance industries nearly $1.6 billion in 1994, as overall payments rose 4.5% from 1993. Since 1986, claims involving AIDS have increased more than 400%, totaling an estimated $9.4 billion.
* The lifetime costs of treating someone with HIV-AIDS in the United States is $119,000.
The federal government spends $2.95 per capita annually on AIDS prevention.
* By some estimates, indirect costs from AIDS are seven times greater than direct costs because of premature death and lost productivity and wages. Scientists postulate indirect costs account for about 80 per cent of total economic costs of AIDS….
* In 1991, 113 of the nation’s 2,000 insurers offered an accelerated benefit policy–also known as a viatical settlement–in which companies pay terminally ill patients between 50 cents and 95 cents on the dollar for valid life insurance policies. Today about 215 companies, including 21 of the nation’s 25 largest insurers, offer such policies.