This analysis seeks to quantify the number of hospitalizations that could have been prevented by vaccination and the total cost of these hospitalizations. It estimates that there were a total of 690,000 vaccine-preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations form June through November 2021, a period that overlaps with the delta variant surge. It estimates that the preventable costs of treating these patients iat $13.8 billion during the six-month period. www.kff.org/...
On average, other wealthy countries spend about half as much per person on health than the U.S.
Can we afford our private healthcare system during a plague? Should the unvaccinated be forced to pay more for healthcare? Or do we let the private healthcare system fall apart another mutant strain of the Covid virus is coming thanks to the unvaccinated Covid has had plenty more chances to mutate more.
Can the US economy afford another Covid outbreak?
Many economists have cut their forecasts for economic growth in 2022 due, in part, to the omicron variant. Zandi, from Moody’s, has cut his forecast for GDP growth in the first quarter of the year to 2 percent annualized compared to 5 percent.www.vox.com/...
Through October of last year, more than 100 million working-age Americans, or people between the ages of 18 and 65, have contracted the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies show that about one-third of people who get COVID experience long-term symptoms, meaning that more than 30 million working-age Americans may have or have had long-COVID.
Bach asked: What if long-haul patients cut their hours by 25%? She took the full-time-worker equivalent of those hours lost and added it to the number of long-haul patients who stopped working altogether. The total: 1.6 million workers, or 15% of currently unfilled jobs.
Johnson took excess deaths and COVID deaths by age and applied labor force participation rates by age. And he got 300,000 workers who died as a result of COVID. Add that to the long-haul workers, and we’ve lost 1.9 million workers — or 18% of currently unfilled jobs.
Sure some of those 33% of workers not working will come back some sooner than others. But what about the flu? If you have flu symptoms you can’t go to work without a Covid test. Getting a test in my recent experience can take a few days to find a testing site near you that is open a few days later then about a week to get the results.
Updated Dec. 29, 2021 The CDC has reported more than 4,500 flu cases from clinical laboratories nationwide for the week ending Dec. 18, up from about 2,500 cases two weeks earlier. Flu experts say they expect cases to continue to increase over the next several weeks.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/flu-cases-rise-covid-19-us-rcna10261
Another CoronaVirus mutation that happens during flu season will kill our economy subtract another 3% from US economic growth for the year. We don’t know if Omicron will cause the same numbers of long term Covid like Delta did but we will find out over the next few months. We cannot afford to keep spending more per person on healthcare and getting much higher death rates from Covid. We cannot afford private health insurance and paying more for drugs than every other nation in the world. Either the unvaccinated pay more money, the US Healthcare system breaks down because they the unvaccinated cannot afford medical treatment and the loss of income while sick. Plus the US economy can’t afford that many workers getting sick again never mind another 33% of workers getting long term Covid with Omicron spreading to way more people than Delta ever did.