Report: Unvaccinated COVID-19 Hospitalizations are Costing the U.S. Billions
On Aug. 20, the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker published a report by Krutika Amin and Cynthia Cox entitled “Unvaccinated COVID-19 hospitalizations cost the U.S. health system billions of dollars.” The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker is a partnership between The Peterson Center on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) to monitor how the U.S. healthcare system is performing in terms of quality and cost.
COVID-19 vaccines have been largely available to adults in the U.S. since mid-April 2021, meaning that adults have been able to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 since late May (if receiving two doses of the vaccine).
Amin and Cox write that “Despite the availability of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, vaccination rates have lagged, particularly in some states and among younger people. As of early August 2021, 28 percent of adults over the age of 18 in the U.S. remain unvaccinated for COVID-19. As a result of lagging vaccinations and the more infectious Delta variant, COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are on the rise again.”
Further, “While real-time data on the cost of all COVID-19 hospitalizations are not publicly available, various sources point to an average hospitalization cost of around $20,000. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reports that Medicare fee-for-service COVID-19 hospitalizations average $24,033. Another study of Medicare fee-for-service enrollees found an average COVID-19 hospitalization cost $21,752. A FAIR Health analysis of private claims data including employer and private Medicare Advantage plans found that COVID-19 hospitalization costs ranged from $17,094 for people over age 70 to $24,012 for people in their 50s. Similarly, our analysis of pre-pandemic private insurance claims for pneumonia hospitalizations with complications averaged $20,292 (though the cost for hospitalizations requiring a ventilator are much higher).”
Amin and Cox explain that they used counts of adult hospitalizations with confirmed COVID-19 cases in recent months reported to HHS to estimate the preventable hospitalization costs for unvaccinated adults.
“Our analysis of CDC data indicates there were 37,000 preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations in June and another 76,000 preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations in July,” Amin and Cox report. Adding these numbers together, we get 113,000 as the number of preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations in June and July 2021.
According to the KFF analysis of CDC, CMS, and HHS Protect Data, 98.3 percent of individuals was the estimated share of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 who were unvaccinated in June and July of 2021. Using that same data, Amin and Cox report that 74 percent is the estimated share of hospitalizations primarily for COVID-19, as coronavirus may not be the primary reason for the hospitalization.
That said, “If each of these preventable hospitalizations cost roughly $20,000, on average, that would mean these largely avoidable hospitalizations have already cost the U.S. health system billions of dollars since the beginning of June. In June and July 2021, COVID-19 hospitalizations among unvaccinated adults cost the U.S. health system over $2 billion.”
Amin and Cox conclude that “Still, this ballpark figure is likely an understatement of the cost burden on the health system from treatment of COVID-19 among unvaccinated adults. First, COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have continued to increase in August 2021. Second, we do not include the cost of outpatient treatment, which is likely substantial. A Medicare study found patients with COVID-related admissions had multiple outpatient visits (3.2 on average) that cost approximately $164 each (and this is only for those COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized at one point). In our analysis of pre-pandemic private insurance claims, we estimated a typical outpatient office visit cost $105 on average. An analysis of privately insured noted COVID-19 outpatient treatment costs can average $500-$1,000 per patient.”
