Economist estimates cost of eye health at $373 billion in 2050

The total cost of vision health, which includes government costs, insurance costs and patient costs, is projected at $373.2 billion in 2050 compared with $145.2 billion in 2014, according to a speaker at the Prevent Blindness Focus on Eye Health National Summit in Washington, D.C.“For the first time we estimated the total economic burden of eye disorders and vision loss for all age groups of the United States and reported these costs by category, by disease, and by payer,” John Wittenborn, a health economist working with Prevent Blindness and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, said in a live webcast of the summit. We’re taking these prevalences and these costs and forecasting them from the current year through the year 2050.”