If you believe the nearly $34 billion spent out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) in America over the past year is a lot of money, think again.
Based on data culled from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey funded by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, CAM amounts to just 1.5 percent of the $2.2 trillion spent by consumers on health care and 11.2 percent of the $286.6 billion spent on out-of-pocket treatments.
About two-thirds of those out-of-pocket expenses were spent on self-care costs (classes, materials and products), with a majority (nearly $15 billion) devoted non-vitamin, non-mineral, natural products. The remainder of that total ($11.9 billion) was allotted to more than 350 million office visits with chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and their peers.
What's more, CAM-related spending on products and office visits represented a mere fraction of the amounts paid by consumers for prescription drugs (about 33 percent) and office visits to physicians (25 percent).
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine July 30, 2009
USA Today July 31, 2009
Nutraceuticals World July 31, 2009