In this U.S. Medicare managed care population, COPD posed a substantial burden in terms of both respiratory-related and total healthcare costs. A comparison of these cost-of-illness estimates to those for elderly COPD patients in other countries would be of great interest, given the increasing age of populations in most Western countries.
Current smokers incurred the highest productivity losses, which translated into higher costs to employers for current smokers. Costs were lower for former smokers and nonsmokers.
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