From Reuters:
“Costs of going unvaccinated
in America are mounting for workers and companies”
Nearly a year after COVID
vaccines became freely available in the U.S., one fourth of American adults
remain unvaccinated, and a picture of the economic cost of vaccine hesitancy is
emerging. It points to financial risk for individuals, companies and publicly
funded programs. Vaccine hesitancy likely already accounts for tens of billions
of dollars in preventable U.S. hospitalization costs and up to hundreds of
thousands of preventable deaths, say public health experts.
For individuals forgoing
vaccination, the risks can include layoffs and ineligibility to collect
unemployment, higher insurance premiums, growing out-of-pocket medical costs or
loss of academic scholarships. For employers, vaccine hesitancy can contribute
to short-staffed workplaces. For taxpayers, it could mean a financial drain on
programs such as Medicare, which provides healthcare for seniors. Some
employers are looking to pass along a risk premium to unvaccinated workers, not
unlike how smokers can be required to pay higher health premiums. One airline
said it will charge unvaccinated workers $200 extra a month in insurance. “When
the vaccines emerged it seemed like everyone wanted one and the big question
was how long it would take to meet the demand,” said Kosali Simon, a professor
of health economics at Indiana University. “It didn’t occur to me that, a year
later, we’d be studying the cost of people not wanting the vaccines.”
Alicia Royce, a 38-year-old
special education teacher in Coachella, California, opted out of getting the
COVID vaccine or having her two vaccine-eligible children get it. Royce’s
parents got the shots, but she has been concerned by issues including reports of
adverse reactions. The decision puts Royce in a delicate spot. Her school, like
others in California, began a vaccine mandate for staff last year. For now,
Royce has a religious exemption and gets tested for COVID twice a week before
entering the classroom. The situation has prompted her family to plan a move to
Alabama, where schools have not imposed mandates, after the school year. “I’ll
get paid less,” said Royce, who expects to take a $40,000-a-year pay cut. “But
I’m moving for my own personal freedom to choose.”
PREVENTABLE CARE, BILLIONS IN
COSTS As the pandemic enters its third year, the number of U.S. patients
hospitalized with COVID is near a 17-month low. Most Americans are vaccinated,
and the country is regaining a semblance of normalcy, even as authorities
predict a coming uptick in infections from the BA.2 sub-variant.
Yet as millions return to
offices, public transportation and other social settings, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention figures show nearly 25% of U.S. adults haven’t been
fully vaccinated, and the latest data suggests many holdouts won’t be easily
swayed: The number of people seeking a first COVID vaccine in the U.S. has
fallen to 14-month lows.
Vaccines have proven to be a
powerful tool against the virus. CDC figures from 2021’s Delta wave found that
unvaccinated Americans had four times greater risk of being infected, and
nearly 13 times higher risk of death from COVID. The disparities were even
greater for those who received booster shots, who were 53 times less likely to
die from COVID. Less than half of the country’s vaccinated population has so
far received a booster.
In a December study, the
nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks U.S. health policy and
outcomes, estimated that between June and November of 2021, unvaccinated
American adults accounted for $13.8 billion in “preventable” COVID
hospitalization costs nationwide. Kaiser estimated that over that six-month
period, which included the Delta wave, vaccinations could have averted 59% of
COVID hospitalizations among U.S. adults. Kaiser tallied 690,000
vaccine-preventable hospitalizations, at an average cost of $20,000. And it
estimated vaccinations could have prevented 163,000 U.S. deaths over the same
period. If vaccine hesitancy accounted for half of the more than 1 million new
U.S. COVID hospitalizations since December, the added cost of preventable
hospital stays could amount to another $10 billion, Reuters found.
One thing is clear: As U.S.
insurance providers and hospital networks reckon with vaccine hesitancy, it’s
likely that patients hospitalized for COVID will end up shouldering a bigger
portion of the bill. “These hospitalizations are not only devastating for
patients and their families but could also put patients on the hook for
thousands of dollars,” Krutika Amin, a Kaiser associate director and one of the
December study’s co-authors, told Reuters. Unlike earlier in the pandemic, Amin
said, most private health insurers have stopped waiving cost-sharing or
deductibles for COVID patients who end up hospitalized. For some insurance
plans, the cost to a hospitalized COVID patient can exceed $8,000 just for
“in-network” services, she added. The expenses could balloon for the uninsured
and those turning to out-of-network care. Now that Americans have the choice to
protect themselves with vaccines, insurance companies are requiring patients to
bear more of these costs, but “many people do not have enough money to pay,”
Amin said. More recent data – covering the Omicron wave – underscores the risk
for the unvaccinated. During January in New York State, unvaccinated adults
were more than 13 times as likely to be hospitalized with COVID than fully
vaccinated adults, state health department figues show.
POLITICAL FLASHPOINT The
U.S. has spent billions to get vaccine shots into arms, including more than
$19.3 billion to help develop vaccines, federal reports show. Still, the
United States has one of the largest COVID vaccine holdout rates among highly
developed countries, as some question the need for getting the shots or bristle
at government or workplace mandates. “The subset of the population that
is really anti-COVID vaccine, ready to quit jobs or test in order to go to
work, is now pretty hardened,” said Julie Downs, a social psychology professor
at Carnegie Mellon University. COVID vaccines have become a political
flashpoint, and vaccination rates vary widely by region: In Vermont, public
health data shows 84% of those 18 and up are fully vaccinated, while the rate
is just above 60% in Alabama.
Nearly 76% of people in the
United States have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, CDC data shows,
but the fully vaccinated figure – across all age-groups – stands at 64%. The
Food and Drug Administration hasn’t yet approved a COVID vaccine for children
under 5. Perhaps the biggest financial risk vaccine holdouts have faced is
getting laid off from their jobs, said Kaiser’s Amin. New York City, which
requires city workers to be vaccinated, fired more than 1,400 of them last
month who hadn’t received a vaccine shot by the city’s deadline, while around
9,000 other workers remained in the process of seeking exemptions to the
requirement, city figures show. The vast majority of the city’s 370,000-person
workforce is vaccinated. A Kaiser Family Foundation nationwide survey in
October found that about a quarter of workers said their employer required
proof of vaccination. Only 1% of workers surveyed — and 5% of unvaccinated
workers — reported having left a job due to a workplace vaccine mandate. A tiny
minority of healthcare workers across the country have been fired or placed on
work leave because they chose to remain unvaccinated, but the dismissals still
amount to thousands of layoffs, according to a report from Fierce Healthcare,
which tracks the trend.
NO-VAX TAX Giant employers
including J.P. Morgan and Bank of America have informed their U.S. employees
they can expect to pay more – or receive fewer perks through company wellness
programs – if they don’t provide proof of vaccination. Other companies
have extended an insurance premium surcharge for unvaccinated spouses or family
members of employees if they want to be insured as a dependent under an
employee’s health plan. And after global life insurance providers were
hit with a higher-than-expected $5.5 billion in claims during the first nine
months of 2021, insurers will be looking to calibrate premiums more closely to
COVID mortality risks going forward, Reuters reported.
Vaccination status and other
health risks – such as obesity or smoking — are metrics life insurers can probe
when customers seek coverage. Under the U.S. Affordable Care Act, individuals
seeking health insurance can’t be denied for pre-existing conditions, including
COVID, or charged more for not being vaccinated. But companies who cover some
of employees’ health insurance costs can pass along higher costs to
unvaccinated employees. Delta Airlines said last year it would charge employees
who didn’t vaccinate an extra $200 a month for health insurance. The airline
said the extra charge reflected the higher risk of COVID hospitalization for
those employees, and noted that employee hospitalizations for COVID had cost
$50,000 each so far, on average.
University students also can face
financial consequences for opting out. At least 500 U.S. colleges have vaccine
mandates, some barring enrollment or in-person schooling for those who don’t
comply, or requiring them to undergo frequent COVID testing. Cait Corrigan said
she enrolled in a master’s program in theology at Boston University this year
and was offered an academic scholarship. Corrigan, who has led public-activism
efforts against vaccine mandates, said she got a religious exemption to the
school’s vaccine mandate, but the school required that she take regular nasal
swab tests to attend. Corrigan said she declined to submit to nasal tests for
“medical reasons.” The university suspended her and withdrew funding, she said.
“It was a big loss.” Boston University didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Now in New York, Corrigan says she is campaigning for a congressional seat as a
Republican. Her platform: “medical freedom.”
^ The Vaccines have been around
now for over a year and have proven themselves effective so it makes sense for
Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, Companies, etc. to make those who are Unvaccinated
pay more. That is especially true if the Unvaccinated get Covid. They should
have to pay 100% of their Medical Costs. The Vaccinated who get Covid should not
have to pay for their Medical Costs though. ^
https://www.reuters.com/business/costs-going-unvaccinated-america-are-mounting-workers-companies-2022-03-25/
