Holiday Medical Costs Add Up
Are you buying gifts for the holidays? You might want to budget for a few additional costs. During
the holiday season, there is an estimated 80,000 injured people due to accidentally over-celebrating during the holiday season. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, emergency room and hospital admissions increase each year. This is a common trend, but are you aware of the associated Holiday Medical Costs?
Over-Celebrating Holiday Medical Cost Statistics
- Overall 6,000 people go to the ER due to holiday decorating injuries each year
- 250 injuries a day, on average, during the holiday season
- 1 in 6 Americans end up with food poisoning
- Holiday lights alone burn, cut, or other about 350 people
- Holiday trees injured 1,000 people last year
Holiday injuries include falls, cuts/lacerations, burns, and poisoning. The medical costs associated with these injuries could impact your spending budget:
1. An emergency room visit on average costs $423
2. Food poisoning costs Americans anywhere from $54B to as high as $78B each year. There are roughly 13M cases reports across the U.S.
3. Visits for burns start at $1,000, going upwards of $5,000 for pediatric or complex cases.
Americans spend $882 dollars on average on the holidays, as reported by the American Research group. There is nothing like the costs of a little over-celebration accident to really break the budget.
On a positive note, it is a great time of year to get an elective surgery. Most people utilize holiday time to obtain surgeries or other procedures, where recovery is only a few days. People are back to work, soon after the holiday.
Happy Holidays! 
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