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COVID-19 hospitalizations could mean significant out-of-pocket medical costs for many Americans:
For their study, the researchers analyzed out-of-pocket costs for pneumonia and other upper respiratory illness hospitalizations from January 2016 through August 2019 as a potential indicator of likely COVID-19 costs. The researchers found that these out-of-pocket costs were particularly high for so-called consumer-directed health plans -- which typically feature lower premiums, compared to standard plans, but higher deductibles that can be paid via tax-advantaged health savings accounts.
[...] Many big-name health insurers have voluntarily waived out-of-pocket cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment. However, employer-sponsored "self-insured" health insurance plans are not required to adhere to such waivers. Thus, tens of millions of Americans have high-deductible insurance plans that, in cases of COVID-19 hospitalization, may expose them to relatively high out-of-pocket costs.
[...] To get a sense of the likely cost burden on patients hospitalized for COVID-19, Eisenberg and colleagues examined de-identified insurance claims for 34,395 unique hospitalizations from January 2016 through August 2019. They looked at out-of-pocket costs incurred by people who had been hospitalized during the 2016-2019 study period with pneumonia, acute bronchitis, lower respiratory infections, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. (Claims data on actual COVID-19 cases were not available in the database at the time of the study.) The cases examined did not include those for people ages 65 and over, who are normally covered by Medicare. The out-of-pocket costs included deductible payments, copayments, and coinsurance payments.
The researchers found that average out-of-pocket spending for the 2016-2019 study period for these respiratory hospitalizations was $1,961 for patients with consumer-directed plans versus $1,653 for patients in traditional, usually smaller-deductible plans.
The out-of-pocket cost gap was lowest for older patients age 56 to 64, and greatest -- $2,237 vs. $1,685 -- for patients 21 and younger. The analysis was not designed to examine why the cost gap varied inversely with patient age, but one possible explanation proposed by the researchers was that, since younger patients are healthier on average, their hospitalizations may reflect more serious and thus more costly illness.
Journal Reference: Matthew D. Eisenberg, Colleen L. Barry, Cameron Schilling, Alene Kennedy-Hendricks. Financial Risk for COVID-19-like Respi- ratory Hospitalizations in Consumer-Directed Health Plans, American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.05.008
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:59PM (6 children)
> you have to live with the exploitative healthcare system you have
I don't live with it. I stay as far away from it as possible. When there was that obamacare penalty I just paid it rather than take the "free" insurance.
> How do you think you wound up in the state you're in?
Idiots who think its a good idea to give the people/organizations who messed it up even more money and power.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:14AM (5 children)
That's nice, until you get sick, or have an accident and have to deal with $500,000 invoice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:24AM (4 children)
Look up chargemaster, no one pays those prices. The real price is 50-99% less. Also taxes already pay for emergency care.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:20AM (2 children)
So I looked up Chargemaster, but there was no useful information, so I did another search, and found this: [worldpopulationreview.com]
So why don't you tell me again how those 1 million bankrupt Americans every year are just doing it wrong?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:00AM (1 child)
You obviously did not, because the Zero-Click info on DDG would have taken you to the Wikipedia page for Chargemaster.
Why don't you just give up your attempts at trolling US politics as a foreigner from the other side of the world?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @07:30PM
Because he or she is right, if you are in the United States. Just because you might be able to negotiate self-pay discounts from a practice's chargemaster does not mean that a catastrophic event still cannot result in over $50,000 of discounted charges you'll be liable for from one hospitalization. Just because you can negotiate prices does not mean that people have to file bankruptcy because of medical conditions [nih.gov] every year. That number is in the hundreds of thousands [cnbc.com]. Per year. Stop thinking you've found some kind of magic bullet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:37AM
By law, someone literally has to pay those prices within a certain percentage listed on the CDM, so your claim of "no one pays it" is just factually incorrect. In addition, even though the public insures against the loss of emergency care, that covers way less than most people think it does and in no way legally absolves you of having to pay the hospital for your care.