Who pays for COVID’s victims? Ultimately, we all do
Two hundred and seventeen days. That is how long a man in his early 80s spent in an Australian private hospital with severe COVID-19.
For many of us, COVID-19 – the virus which shut down our schools and workplaces – is a concern of the past. But, as Angus Thomson reports today, private health insurers are increasingly worried about long and intensive hospital stays for patients suffering severe post-COVID symptoms and conditions, ranging from pneumonia to delirium and muscle wastage.
The Private Health Association’s annual Hospital High Claims report for 2023 reveals COVID-19 and long COVID are two of the major factors driving a year-on-year increase in so-called “high claims” – those exceeding $10,000 – for hospital stays.
The least expensive of the 20 largest claims for hospitalisation due to COVID-19 exceeded $62,000. The most expensive – a 42-day stay by a man in his late 60s which included continuous ventilatory support for more than four days – cost just over $190,000.
Twelve of the 20 patients identified – anonymously – in the report had developed some form of pneumonia as a result of their infection but others had more varied symptoms. A woman in her late 60s had a severe depressive episode clinicians found was associated with COVID-19.
These figures do not include the claims for long COVID hospital stays, which included three claims of more than $60,000, including a man in his 90s who spent 129 days in hospital with severe post-COVID-19 pneumonia.
The report is a reminder that COVID-19 continues to be a risk to the elderly and otherwise vulnerable and the community should take steps to manage the spread of respiratory viruses.
It is easy to say that these people would have been sick with something else in hospital, if not COVID-19. And it is true that bad flu seasons and waves of other respiratory disease – such as this year’s surge in whooping cough among children – have health service impacts.
But there is no denying that Australians are getting sicker. There were more than 412,000 high hospital claims in 2023, an 8.6 per cent increase on the previous year. (These figures, of course, only capture those who have private health insurance. A cohort of – also mostly elderly, and arguably more vulnerable – patients are treated for COVID-19 complications and other ailments in public wards.)
Even if you do not care about protecting the health of those less sick than you are, there is an entirely self-interested reason to want to have fewer people spending months of their lives in private hospitals: rising premiums.
The cash for insurers to pay out these high claims must come from somewhere and that is their policyholders.
With the latest NSW Health surveillance report finding COVID-19 is moving through the community at a moderate level, it is important to remember the safety messages of that unprecedented time, such as staying home when sick and being aware of the relative risk the virus can pose to different members of the community.
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