An Average Covid-19 Hospitalization Costs Medicare About 150 Times More Than It Does To Vaccinate One Beneficiary

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By Deidre McPhillips, Amanda Sealy and Dakin Andone, CNNSeptember 9, 2021 astatine 4:40 pm

(CNN) — A Medicare beneficiary hospitalized with Covid-19 costs the wellness security programme astir 150 times much than it does to afloat vaccinate that individual, a CNN investigation shows.

Covid-19 vaccines are provided astatine nary nonstop outgo to residents of the United States, but Medicare reimburses wellness attraction providers up to $150 to afloat vaccinate beneficiaries with some doses of the two-dose regimen vaccines by Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna, per billing documents published by the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That’s $40 for each dose administered and $35 to administer the shots astatine the individual’s location oregon radical surviving setting.

Meantime, the mean outgo to hospitalize a Medicare beneficiary with Covid-19 is $21,752 implicit an mean enactment of 9.2 days, according to probe published successful August successful the Annals of Internal Medicine. That’s astir 145 times the outgo of vaccinating a Medicare beneficiary.

Average fees associated with Covid-19 hospitalization were adjacent higher if a diligent needed a ventilator, bringing the outgo to an mean of $49,441 implicit 17.1 days — much than 300 times the outgo of administering the vaccines.

Covid-19 hospitalizations successful the United States are climbing again pursuing a summertime surge fueled by the Delta variant. In June and July, determination were implicit 100,000 preventable Covid-19 hospitalizations among unvaccinated adults, an investigation by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed.

Assuming each outgo astir $20,000, the investigation said, these hospitalizations outgo the country’s wellness strategy much than $2 billion, underscoring conscionable however important vaccinations are to the combat against the coronavirus.

There are astir 102,000 Covid-19 patients hospitalized crossed the country, per information from US Health and Human Services, with much than 25,800 patients successful intensive attraction portion beds.

“We cognize the pathway to extremity this pandemic,” US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN’s Jim Acosta Wednesday. “That’s getting vaccinated.”

According to information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, astir 53% of each Americans are afloat vaccinated, portion astir 27% of the eligible colonisation — radical 12 and older — are not vaccinated. The existent 7-day mean of vaccinations initiated per time dropped 19% from past week and 30% from a period earlier, the information shows, though that could beryllium owed successful portion to the Labor Day vacation weekend.

Murthy pointed to different respiratory viruses similar those that origin the communal acold that we are capable to unrecorded with, saying, “What’s antithetic from those viruses and Delta is that they don’t outgo america the types of numbers that we spot successful presumption of lives lost, successful presumption of hospitalizations.”

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