What happened to the principle that everyone deserves healthcare?
BY KAT ROSENFIELD
An underdiscussed element of the Covid pandemic is the cost of the virus — not in American lives, but in American dollars. In the United States, a Covid hospitalisation costs $29,000 on average; if you’re sick enough to require an ICU stay and a ventilator, that average soars to $156,000. And in a country without universal healthcare, with a piecemeal system of private insurance that ties insurance coverage to employment, and amid a pandemic that has left many unemployed, an enormous number of Americans stand to find themselves underwater. There’s a looming crisis of Covid medical debt.
Already, their stories are legion: there’s the flight attendant who spent a week in the hospital with Covid, then spent six months fighting with his insurance company over the $25,000 bill. There’s the Phoenix family who were hit with a million-dollar claim summary and a bill for $700,000 while still grieving their father’s death. There’s the dental office manager, stricken with long Covid and still too sick to work, drowning in tens of thousands of dollars of medical debt.
Unorthodox Truth 