The price to pay for contracting the COVID-19 virus is going to be extremely expensive, according to recent findings.
According to a study by the University of Michigan, while most health insurance companies waived co-pays and other forms of cost-sharing for people hospitalized with coronavirus in 2020, many stopped doing so in early 2021, as vaccines became more widely available.
Based on data from actual patients hospitalized for COVID-19 last year, the study suggests the lack of waivers could mean bills of about $3,800 for people with job-related or self-purchased private insurance, and $1,500 for people with Medicare Advantage plans.
The study analyzes more than 4,000 COVID-related hospitalizations of people with private insurance and Medicare Advantage insurance between March and September 2020. The data come from the IQVIA PharMetrics Plus for Academics Database, which includes claims data from multiple insurers across the United States.
The researchers found that the vast majority of patients didn’t have to pay for hospital services such as room-and-board changes, suggesting their plans waived cost-sharing for bills sent by hospitals.
However, among the few patients who did have to pay for hospital services – a sign that a waiver wasn’t in place – out-of-pocket costs were in the thousands of dollars.
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That amount billed directly to patients is a small portion of the average cost of caring for a hospitalized COVID-19 patient.
The study finds that each hospitalization of a person with private insurance cost a total of $42,200 on average and that each hospitalization of a person with COVID-19 who had Medicare Advantage coverage averaged about $21,400.
“One of my main concerns is that the threat of high costs might cause some patients with severe COVID-19 to delay going to the hospital, increasing their risk of death,” said lead author Kao-Ping Chua, M.D., Ph.D., a health policy researcher and pediatrician at Michigan Medicine and the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation Research Center.
To prevent this, the author suggests that policymakers could require insurers to waive the costs of hospitalization for COVID-19 for long as the pandemic persists.
And of course, it’s important for the general public to avoid contracting the virus, too.
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