10 Most Expensive Medical Conditions Columbia SC

What's the cost of poor health? A lot more than you may think. The nation's 10 most expensive medical conditions cost about $500 billion to treat in 2005, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). This includes money spent on visits to doctors' offices, clinics and emergency departments, hospital stays, home health care, and prescription medications. AHRQ calculated the costs of these health conditions using information gathered from a nationally representative sample of more than 32,000 people, as well as supplemental data from medical providers.

Many of the conditions, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes, are common, chronic diseases that also tend to be preventable. But experts say aging Americans, who are facing ever increasing health care costs, often underestimate their ability to prevent these illnesses and their costly complications. Here, the top 10 diseases that top the spending scale:

Condition: Heart disease and related conditions
Estimated Cost: $76 billion
More than 80 million Americans are currently living with one or more types of cardiovascular disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), resulting in an equally astonishing number of trips to the doctor and hospital. Over 6 million hospitalizations occur each year because of cardiovascular diseases, and Americans also make more than 81 million cardiovascular disease-related doctor visits every year. As the population ages, the economic impact of cardiovascular diseases on the nation's health care system is expected to become even greater...

Click here to read more from Quality Health