According to the US Health and Human Service Department’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the average annual cost of prescription drugs to treat a child with asthma in the US rose from $349 to $838 over a ten-year period. The AHRQ study looked at costs in 1997-98 compared to 2007-08.
Over the same period, the average overall cost of treatment for a child with asthma rose from just over $1800 per year to approximately $2500 per year, and the percentage of US children treated rose from 4.7% to 6.1%. For non-Hispanic white children with asthma, total treatment cost in 2007-08 reached nearly $3000 and average prescription drug cost was $976.
Prescription drug expenditures for children with asthma were directly related to income, with families classified as high income spending more than $1100 per year per child and those classified as poor spending approximately $650.
Read the AHRQ report.
