Jason, Leonard A, Benton, Mary C, Valentine, Lisa et al. · Dynamic medicine : DM · 2008 · DOI
This study looked at how much money ME/CFS costs both individual patients and society as a whole in the United States. Researchers examined medical bills, test costs, and medication expenses for ME/CFS patients in two different groups. They found that ME/CFS is very expensive—costing between $2,000 and $8,600 per patient per year in direct medical costs alone, and billions of dollars to society when you include lost work and productivity.
This is one of the few U.S. studies quantifying ME/CFS's economic burden, providing concrete evidence of the substantial financial impact at both individual and societal levels. These findings support the need for increased research funding, better clinical recognition, and healthcare resource allocation for ME/CFS patients and services.
This study does not establish the direct causes of ME/CFS or prove that high costs are due to any specific factor. It also does not account for indirect costs borne by patients themselves (such as lost wages or out-of-pocket expenses beyond insurance coverage), and the extrapolation to national figures relies on prevalence estimates that may not reflect current epidemiologic data.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Jason, Leonard A, Benton, Mary C, Valentine, Lisa, Johnson, Abra, & Torres-Harding, Susan (2008). The economic impact of ME/CFS: individual and societal costs.. Dynamic medicine : DM. https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-5918-7-6
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-jason-2008-economic-impact,
author = {Jason, Leonard A and Benton, Mary C and Valentine, Lisa and Johnson, Abra and Torres-Harding, Susan},
title = {The economic impact of ME/CFS: individual and societal costs.},
journal = {Dynamic medicine : DM},
year = {2008},
doi = {10.1186/1476-5918-7-6},
note = {PubMed: 18397528},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/jason-2008-economic-impact},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/jason-2008-economic-impact
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