The trace bloomberg gunshot wounds too expensive
courtesy thetrace.com

Apparently the anti-gun side is taking a new approach by contemplating the price tag associated with treating gunshot wounds. Well…that’s novel…

10X. The amount of blood required by gunshot victims compared to victims of other trauma.

When a person is shot, severe blood loss is one of the biggest threats to life. Once a victim arrives at a trauma center, he or she may need a transfusion to survive. But until recently, little research had been conducted on just how much blood gunshot victims require.

Earlier this year, a new study found that gunshot victims need 10 times more blood, on average, than other victims of trauma. That volume of blood comes at a price. Researchers calculated the average cost of transfusing a gunshot patient was more than $11,000 — almost twice the cost for victims of other types of traumatic injuries. In extreme cases, the cost reached as high as $126,000. The findings are a stark reminder of the vast amount of resources these injuries consume.

– Team Trace for The Trace, 13 Statistics that Tell the Story of Gun Violence in 2018

 

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82 COMMENTS

  1. This isn’t new. They published something like this a few years back. A couple of us did the math to figure out how much was saved by the 500,000-2,000,000 DGU’s annually. As you can probably guess it dwarfed their supposed cost.

  2. $11,000 or more for blood transfusions???? W.T.F. $11,000? How is this even possible? Oh, nevermind. I forgot. American medical costs run totally amok. Possibly even more abused than 2A.

        • Well, the government chose to do that, I never voted for it, so the government pays the price! If it costs too much, take it out of government salaries.

          If we still feel gunshot wounds cost too much, we should outlaw them.

    • My mom had about a dozen bags of blood in 24 hours about a month before she died (went to hospital for a gushing tumor in her stomach, caught pneumonia in there that did her in), and she was getting a pint about every week because chemo took her red cell count way down.

  3. Treating fat asses who can’t be bothered to take a walk or put down the pastries costs a shitload more than anything else to society. Time to deal with their high cost to society. Especially if the left wants single payer to cover the US and every invading migrant that makes it here.

    This is just like the noise over a $5 billion wall being made by the same people who are perfectly happy to blow $45 billion a year sitting on our thumbs in Afghanistan as long as it goes against whatever Trump wants.

    • You got it.

      The fed government takes in approximately 4 trillion dollars a year in taxes.

      They spend an extra 1.25 trillion.

      5 trillion divided by 5 billion. Do the math.

      Love both the tea party and Democrats crying about financial responsibility until they have a pet project. Next time the liberals cry about the 5 billion, just tell them we can use the 143 billion dollar savings ACA was going to give us.

  4. Step 1) Tell the people they have a “right” to health care, despite who pays for it.
    Step 2) Mandate everyone get health care.
    Step 3) After everyone has mandated healthcare, tell them that gun shot wounds are too expensive to treat.
    Step 4) Propose banning guns to solve the expensive problem, while heaps of of the populace join your side in the effort to “improve” health care.
    Step 5) Ban guns, despite a constitution that expressly forbids it, because the populace was won over.
    Step 6) Control everything the populace does on the basis of “improving” everyone’s “healthcare” whose cost is shared.
    Step 7) Banning “soda drinks” is now justifiable. Banning “T-bone” steaks is now justifiable. Banning anything that can be perceived to do harm is now justifiable.
    Step 8) Enjoy freedom-less hell, with all your decisions subjugated by the populace’s own dreadful opinions, and zero tolerance of each other.

    • ‘Step 1) Tell the people they have a “right” to health care, despite who pays for it.’

      More like tell people that they have the right to take money away from others by force to pay for their medical treatment because it’s ‘unfair’ that some people have more than others, regardless of how hard they worked for what they have or how rare their talents are. And don’t stop at health care, if your right to access health care = a right to force others to pay for it, well then what about your other ‘needs/rights’? Free food, housing and smart phones for everyone! Oh and you have a right to an education too, so we’ll take their money for free college while we’re at it. Straight up Marxism.

      • Yep.

        Mandate everything is shared. And now that everything is shared, we mandate what must never be shared (guns, etc.)

      • The left is well on the way to indoctrinating our young in the socialist way. Over Thanksgiving I had an opportunity to talk with a 17 year old high school senior relative. They are dedicated socialists, rejecting any conservative values and ideas. Sweden is the socialist utopia example and nothing I could say made a dent. Facts are rejected as “right wing propaganda. Offer of documentation was rejected out of hand, they believe.

        This is the child of conservative parents, dedicated shooters, strong 2A supporters. Attends a “magnet school” that has scholastic entrance requirements and they are brain washing the students.

        The left is winning on demographics by controlling the education system and importing votes ( illegals, felons, cemeteries, …..)

        • And they’re too dumb or too stubborn to accept that Sweden is neither nearly as socialist as they think, nor as utopian.

          Not that indoctrination isn’t in high gear, but 17 year olds tend to be stupid and stupid people tend to be Demoncrat/socialist types. Fortunately people tend to be much smarter when they’re 40. Hopefully she’ll marry a guy with some sense and her ‘beliefs’ will be whittled down by reality.

        • The Sweden example is so last year. My lefty friends chatter on about the wonders of socialist Norway. As followers of the Ministry of Information, their claims and thoughts about Sweden have been erased. They’ve ALWAYS been talking about Norway. That way they can ignore the substantial moves away from socialism that have occurred in the wake of Sweden’s socialist failures.

          Now if you can ignore the significant ways in which Norway is not socialist, then all you have to remember is that it really helps for a small population nation to stumble across a few trillion dollars worth of oil reserves in the North Sea to sustain the free-lunch gov. model.

        • Yes gun wounds are the worst because the size of the wound channel from a hunting knife or butcher knife is so much smaller than a 0.354″ hole. OK, because many of us know that 0.354″ isn’t much, we opt for the 0.5″ to 0.6″ hole.

      • How do you get to “Marxism” on this one? Not seeing the connection between Karl Marx (who can never be dead enough in my book) and health care systems anywhere?

        • Actually, pretty simple. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. Education promptly devolves into “how to be more needy” and “there’s no reason to earn more than XX.”. That is Marxian. That is also single payer healthcare. They are the same. Insofar as Yomama care is concerned, it is inaccessible for most anyone with an income, if you are one of those who pay for it, you are not allowed to access it. That is socialism, Marxism, stupidity, lots of different and accurate terms for it, what is your problem with calling it Marxist?

    • I like to tell people that if they want to see the true agenda of the left to watch the movie Demolition Man but to remember that the left only thinks they can have that world. All the wannabe Cocteaus may be able to force that idea down everyone’s throats for a while but sooner or later the people will chafe under the restrictions and/or the money will run out and society will devolve to be more like the LA in the intro to that film than anything else.

    • Other risky behavior and activities will be banned also, water skiing, snow skiing, swimming, rock climbing, motor cycle riding, baseball, ATV’s, driving cars, and of course sex, because you know you can “catch something” like STD’s or God forbid “pregnancy” .

    • And they will mandate vaccines, because, you know, for your own good. Because like guns, they want to save lives…..

      • Yes, vaccines save lives, that’s true. Many millions of lives saved by vaccines. A wonderful advance in human civilization, no doubt of it.

        Guns? Well, having a gun has saved my life twice. So also a good thing.

      • Pg2, you should get to work educating the rest of the world about the great threat the US poses by that insistence, they should take their business elsewhere! Then you could join them and be their king! Yippee!

        • The US is the most vaccinated country in the world by a large margin. We also have the highest infant mortality rate in the civilized world, and the top under 5 year old death rate in the world…..but only coincidence, when it comes to vaccines it’s ALWAYS. coincidence.

        • ‘We also have the highest infant mortality rate in the civilized world, and the top under 5 year old death rate in the world…’

          Bullshit.

        • That was an error, I left out in the developed world. Fact: The US has the highest under 5 year old mortality rate in the The developed world. My bad on the initial post. At least you’re paying attention gov.

        • I still call bullshit, but I will concede that the infant mortality rate took a nosedive after they passed O’Bamacare.

          Also, are we counting the children who die in the desert trying to enter the country illegally?

        • Gov, you can call bullshit all you want, but like a petulant child crying for a lollipop, it still doesn’t change the answer.

        • Me too. Thank God for improvements in plumbing, clean water supply, better nutrition and living conditions.

  7. “The authors calculated the average cost of transfusion per gunshot patient to be $11,327. For any other type of trauma patient, the price is about half that: $5,716.”
    “Between 2005 and 2017, the hospital treated 2,672 gunshot patients, who tended to be younger, male, and more severely injured than other trauma patients. Of those, 538 required a blood transfusion.”
    Works out to about $252K/year, for a hospital with an annual budget of a few hundred million dollars. Interesting that only 20% of gunshot patients need a transfusion.

    • If it is really necessary to even out those costs, we could shoot all the “other trauma” patients when they arrive. I mean, WTF is anybody wasting taxpayer money for crap like this report for? Who authorized taxpayer money for it, and is the dipshit fired yet? This is appropriating taxpayer money to pay for meaningless propaganda.

  8. Quit importing and supporting illegal voters for the dems. We’ll save enough money to cover the health care for all Americans.

      • We just had a cop killed by an illegal here in CA. Now the cop and the illegal will get to vote for the dems for the next hundred years. And the young woman murdered as she was jogging by an illegal will get the same honor. They will vote for the very ones that enabled their murders.

        If we could clean illegals out and their drain, both in crime and social services, were ended we would save not only innocent lives but substantial money as well.

  9. And people lose less blood when they’re stabbed with swords or shot with arrows? I doubt it. They’re comparing mostly crushing wounds (car accidents and falls) to piercing wounds. Of course piercing wounds are going to lose more blood. Weapons were designed to kill (even thousands of years ago) and since they exist your best strategy is better him than me.

    • I imagine that gunshots generally penetrate deeper then most non fatal stab wounds/ cuts. I have never been shot but I have been stabbed and it only took a few stictches to fix. It’s harder then it looks to stab deep enough into a non complaint victim. That being said I def proscribe to something said on an earlier tread. I can forgive a gunshot but stabbing is personal.

      • As defensive knife fighting goes, you’re better off slashing than stabbing. But my point was more to the effect of the fact that pre-gunpowder weapons created wounds that were as bad or worse than gunshot wounds. Before gunpowder it was swords and arrows. How much blood loss does one experience when slashed from shoulder to hip with a rapier?

        • Might be interesting to study the comparison between gunshot victims and stabbing victims.

          A cop I know liked to say that the winner of a knife fight dies in the ER, the loser died at the scene. Stabbing victims might not be affecting the transfusion numbers much because the medics don’t bother putting good blood into a corpse.

        • From the original study:
          “Compared to non‐GSW penetrating injuries (e.g., stab wounds), those with GSWs had approximately four times higher transfusion requirements (3.3 ± 13.5 vs. 0.80 ± 3.8 units/patient; p < 0.0001), and approximately eight times greater overall mortality (653 of 2672 [24.4%] vs. 28 of 956 [2.9%]; p < 0.0001)."
          Of course, that doesn't separate out different types of penetrating injuries (accidental penetration vs. intentional stabbing).

        • Touché, I wasn’t trying to diminish your point, merely speculating on a possible reason for the disparity. That being said you are correct better to slash then stab.

        • Slash at the extremities. 1) They’re easier to hit, 2)your goal is to get away and not to kill, and 3) it’s pretty hard to chase after someone when you’ve been hamstrung and pretty hard to grab someone when your hands are drenched in your own blood.

        • Do not agree. Slashing the right place can stop an attack.

          Stab wounds tend to cause more severe trauma and pain deep into muscle tissue.

          Slashing deep into an unprotected area can produce deep tissue damage.

          Slashing through clothing tend to mitigate the damage to minor status.

          Stabbing through heavy clothing still produces deep tissue damage.

          Mind of like thunder and lightning. Slashing produces the “ook” factor and emotional response.

          Stabbing does the heavy lifting to produce incapacitating or lethal wounds.

      • once had a broadhead arrow [accidentally] shoved into the back of my calf…that sucker bled forever…even though the wound appeared very small…

  10. Dying from an infection or malpractice in a hospital is far more likely than being shot by a bad guy. So good day to you, sir.

    (New Year’s resolution…no curse words).

  11. So maybe let the people who shot themselves bleed out. Maybe let the gangbangers bleed out. That out to save a ton of money.

  13. “The findings are a stark reminder of the vast amount of resources these injuries consume.”

    They’re also a stark reminder of the vast amount of moonbattery out there. How about, then, we just outlaw injuries? Or we could outlaw the resources? Or just outlaw the consumption of them? (Zerocare tried that already)

    I have a better idea . . . outlaw these findings.

  14. Treating head injuries from car wrecks was also too expensive, now seat belt laws. And here it is the real reason for the medicals concern on gun Saftey violence. Money, when it’s all cut and dried it’s all about that money

  15. So, this definitely means they support us cartyinf firearms to defend ourselves against those who would attempt to shoot us. After all, a criminal is less likely to shoot someone after he himself has been shot. One wound prevents multiple wounds.

  16. “Once a victim arrives at a trauma center, he or she may need a transfusion to survive. But until recently, little research had been conducted on just how much blood gunshot victims require.”
    It really should not be that hard to figure this out. If someone comes into the emergency room and is a quart low, you just add one quart, you fill ‘er up, top ’em off, all the way up to the “F” mark. I would bet the confusion is the result of a combination of the effects of “Common Core” and “Obamacare”.
    Of course, under socialized medicine, some Federal bureaucrat may decide we can all get by on 3/4 of a tank, or perhaps a blend of blood and corn oil, to protect the environment.

  17. One forgotten statistic: 100% of criminals stop committing crime after being shot DRT ( dead right there)

    A little drastic but it works, and they brought it on to themselves. Don’t want to bleed to death,? don’t commit crime and endanger your fellow man.

  18. One of the biggest scams have to be blood donation centers… Selling your blood for hundreds of dollars while giving you popsicles.

  19. I look at it this way…. if they want to take it as a money issue, that’s fine…. think about how much money can be saved by letting the perp bleed out after getting shot while committing a felony…. no paying for the ambulance, the doctors and nurses, the around the clock guards, the courtroom, the judge, the lawyers, all 12 jury members, not to mention the blood transfusion, and the lengthy jail term and all that entails. Just let me bleed out then. Saves a lot of money.

  20. A repeal of The Emergency MedicalTreatment and Labor Act(EMTALA) would go a long way to wasting good money on the “usual suspects” who suffer gunshot wounds.

    • Yeah, so when my brother had a stroke (athlete, defective blood vessel, no way to know) but had no insurance because he was a college student back then, the medics and ER team should have just done what exactly? Waited to determine who would pay or saved his life?

      EMTALA saves lives.

  21. The only value I see in the study is to guide trauma centers in high crime areas to stock more whole blood, plasma, etc. But of course, they would already know that, because it’s a trauma center, in a high crime area.

    Making the study kinda’ stupid and wasteful.

  22. But is the CDC’s range of uncertainty big enough they can shut up the pesky gun people about those studies that came out wrong?

    “Our studies show 1.5 million-ish DGUs / year, plus or minus 2 million. So, really (at the low-end estimate) that’s half a million a yrar that backfite.”

  24. Sorry this is long, it touched a nerve here and there …

    I see the common mistake in some posts of comparing health care systems to the Socialism of Karl Marx and other long dead swine of his ilk. What Marx meant by Socialism is not what Europeans are talking about when they foolishly try to talk to Americans about “social” ideas in health care, or when we try to make sense of what the hell they are talking about. Marx was talking about politics and economics, not about designing a system to pay for health care.

    I see three problems most Americans have in making sense of European approaches.

    1. All they mean by “Socialism” is all the people get access. That’s it, no political theory involved, Karl Marx remains as dead and buried as ever. Germany and Switzerland have socialized their health insurance systems but they are still Capitalist.

    2. They are not all the same. Some are capitalist, some are state run, but all are regulated. So too is all health care in the USA regulated. The difference is in how. In European countries that are not using State run single payer, not-for-profit health insurance is the rule, with profit making plans the smallest part of it. This gives them a huge advantage in freeing up cash to treat people with. Keep in mind that a for-profit company has added overhead, added costs. Not the least of which is all the workers involved in complex billing and in systematic denial of benefits. “Rescission Bureaus”, a staple of American health insurance, are the original “Death Panels”.

    3. Populations of these countries is usually too small for a meaningful comparison. Norway is a bit over 5 million people, the USA about 66 times as big. As of 2015 the USA had nine or ten metro areas with larger populations than Norway. The largest was about four times more people. Scaling anything Norway is doing on a national level to the size of the American population is no simple problem.

    Possibly a 4th is that people like Bernie Sanders, who has some good and bad ideas, keeps calling himself a Socialist. He is not a Socialist under what most Americans imagine when they hear the term. He is not a Marxist, Leninist, no friend to Engles, or any of that. He is talking about a “social safety net” concept, which was not on the radar of evil Socialist / Communist Utopian crackpots.

    So what would work for the USA? A Capitalist, Representative Democracy pushing 330 million people?

    The closest country I see to a population size and system that could translate to the USA is Germany, at about 25% our population. Also just as industrialized, as Capitalist as we are with high standards of living.

    The German system began in 1883 and is the oldest continually operating approach in the world. It has survived world wars, Nazis, all sorts of economic bad times, the Cold War, all of it. Designed by Capitalists to serve the needs of industry, the goals were simple:
    1. Resist Marxism and the growth of unions.
    2. Industry needed a healthy and stable work force.

    A key decision they made was a moral and economic choice. They saw that the cost of operating health insurance in a for-profit model was too great, took too much money away from caring for people. The moral imperative of human life was in synch with the need of a healthy and stable work force.

    So the Germans of 1883 required everyone to buy health insurance because the costs do not add up otherwise. They made insurance be not-for-profit and set minimum standards. Later they began allowing those same insurance companies to sell high-end plans at a profit. Today both types exist, after going on 136 years, it all works far better than the mess we have.

    • Enuf, if you have all this understanding, why do you dodge the actual question about socialism which would clarify your position for some of us (at least for me)? Without the dodging and junking, exactly who is *paying* for these socialist wonders? If I am a citizen, can I opt out and just take care of my own business? You mentioned in your #2 some concept of “freeing up money” for a wonderful purpose of some sort, and all I could see was “freeing up *what* money?”. Whether anyone has told you or not, America’s foundation is built on freedom, not free stuff.

    • that german model sounds like what we should be working toward…there’s a place for insurance companies…but they’re way too dominant in our health care system…

  25. Do they really want to start a debate on medical costs and which things cost disproportionately more? Last I checked universal coverage was forced on us, “pass it to know what in it” and such.

    Let’s talk about obesity, let’s talk ERs clogged with non-emergent situations. Let’s talk about the resources used on people with terminal conditions that only pre-long the inevitable. Something tells me that’s a talk they don’t want to have. “Gunz r bad” and whatnot.

  26. If I remember correctly, it used to be if someone donated blood, they received any blood they needed in the future at no cost. Is this not the case, anymore?

    My other thought is to save a bad guy from some horrible medical bills, be nice and kill them in place.

  28. So back to the topic at hand so since It’s cost prohibitive to treat heavily bleeding gunshot wounds It Is “EVERY” gun owner’s duty see to It that In a self defense situation whether In your home or on the streets that the Intruder/attacker Is not alive when the ambulance arrives.
    (Just my opinion)
    Together we can keep our hospital’s from going bankrupt

  29. The positive side tho is all this is wounded “appendix carry” people have cleaned up the
    gene pool! AND the local choirs can use the additional sopranos!

    Rule #2 Never point your muzzle at anything you don’t want to destroy.

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