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Joint Economic Committee Democrats Chairman - Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM)

In 2015, Opioid Overdoses Killed More Than 33,000 Americans

June 12, 2017

Weekly Economic Snapshot 6/12 - 6/16

Economic Facts for this Week

  • In 2015 alone, opioid overdoses killed more than 33,000 Americans. To see how the opioid epidemic has affected your state, see JEC fact sheets here.
  • The opioid epidemic is intertwined with the economic stress faced by people in local communities: research finds that a one percentage point increase in a county’s unemployment rate is associated with a 3.6 percent increase in the opioid death rate.
  • One full year of methadone maintenance costs $4,700 on average per patient, compared to $24,000 per year to imprison a drug offender.
  • One dollar spent on drug treatment yields over $18 in cost savings from related crime reduction, compared to only $0.37 from investments in prisons.
  • By ending Medicaid expansion, TrumpCare would cut about $4.5 billion for treatment for mental health and SUDs, cutting coverage for nearly 1.3 million people with a SUD, and undermining the recent progress we’ve made in addressing the epidemic. Medicaid is a crucial tool in this fight, and between TrumpCare and the Trump budget, it could be cut $1.3 trillion, or 45 percent, by 2026.

 

Chart of the Week

The breadth of the opioid crisis encompasses the entire United States, but this epidemic is felt most deeply in the one-fifth of states in Appalachia, New England, and the Southwest where the overdose death rate rises above 22.2 per 100,000 deaths. In West Virginia—where the death rate hit 41.5—opioid deaths are as prevalent as the share of Americans who die from strokes.

 

ICYMI

  • For more discussion of the opioid crisis, see excerpts from the recent Joint Economic Committee Hearing here.
  • A recent Joint Economic Committee report reviewed the costs of debt ceiling brinkmanship, including the fact that debt brinkmanship in 2011 increased the federal government’s borrowing costs by $1.3 billion in that year alone.
  • Researchers studying the life-cycle impacts of early childhood development programs find a nearly 14 percent return on investment—more than 3 times the long-run return on the S&P 500 stock index.
  • New research shows that after Kansas eliminated taxes on “pass-through” businesses in 2012, tax avoidance jumped, as individuals sought to claim more income as business income eligible for the new tax exemption.

Coming This Week

Permalink: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2017/6/weekly-economic-snapshot-6-12-6

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