This article was originally published by
Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog.
How would you feel if you received a bill for more than $34,000
after being tested and treated for the coronavirus? This pandemic
is showing the entire world that the U.S. healthcare system is
deeply, deeply broken, and there is no way that we can continue to
go on like this.
If coronavirus testing is quick, inexpensive and widely
available all over the rest of the globe, why can’t that be the
case here too? Democrats and Republicans have been fighting about
fixing our healthcare system all the way back to the 1990s and they
haven’t gotten the job done. Now we have a system that is a
complete and utter embarrassment, and it is about to be overwhelmed
by the greatest public health crisis that any of us have ever
seen.
Even under normal circumstances, most Americans are deathly
afraid to go to the hospital because of what it will cost.
have written about this numerous times before, but not even I would
have imagined that getting tested and treated for
coronavirus would
cost more than $34,000…
A woman in the United States says she was billed $34,927.43
after being tested and treated for the coronavirus, Time magazine
reports.When Danni Askini first came down with the symptoms of the virus
— shortness of breath, a fever, a cough and migraines — she was
told by a doctor to go to the emergency room. There, she was told
she had pneumonia and could go home. She visited the emergency room
two more times as her symptoms persisted and worsened before she
was finally tested for the coronavirus. Three days later her
results showed she had COVID-19.
How in the world is it possible for a bill to get that high?
As Danni pointed out, she now owes the hospital more than she
paid for both of her college degrees.
So this story is about my experience with
COVID and my final hospital bill: $34,927.23 – an amount that I
will never be able to repay and more than I paid to get both my
Bachelors and Masters degree. @realDonaldTrump
@ewarren
@AyannaPressley
please help! https://t.co/pJApXMPzcW— Danni Askini (@danniaskini)
March 20, 2020
Sadly, she is going to be far from alone. According
to the Kaiser
Family Foundation, coronavirus victims all over America are
going to get hit with extremely high medical bills…
A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that
the average cost of COVID-19 treatment for someone with employer
insurance—and without complications—would be about $9,763.
Someone whose treatment has complications may see bills about
double that: $20,292. (The researchers came up with those numbers
by examining average costs of hospital admissions for people with
pneumonia.)
What this means is that if even a single member of your family
catches the virus it could instantly wipe you out financially, and
this is especially true if you do not have health insurance.
Congress has passed a bill which will now cover the cost of
coronavirus testing, but the bad news is that “it
doesn’t do anything to address the cost of
treatment”…
Public health experts predict that tens of thousands and
possibly millions of people across the United States will likely
need to be hospitalized for COVID-19 in the foreseeable future. And
Congress has yet to address the problem. On March 18, it passed the
Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which covers testing costs
going forward, but it doesn’t do anything to address the cost of
treatment.
For those that catch the virus, and officials are warning that
will eventually be most of us, treatment is going to cost far, far
more than testing will.
You may think that you will just tough things out at home, but
if this virus hits you hard enough you will either go to the
hospital or you will die.
For a moment, I would like for you to consider what a medical
worker in Louisiana is saying about
the patients that he is treating…
“With our coronavirus
patients, once they’re on ventilators, most need about the
highest settings that we can do. About 90% oxygen, and 16 of PEEP,
positive end-expiratory pressure, which keeps the lung inflated.
This is nearly as high as I’ve ever seen. The level we’re at
means we are running out of options.“In my experience, this
severity of ARDS is usually more typical of someone who has a near
drowning experience — they have a bunch of dirty water in their
lungs — or people who inhale caustic gas. Especially for it to
have such an acute onset like that. I’ve never seen a
microorganism or an infectious process cause such acute damage to
the lungs so rapidly. That was what really shocked me.”
Many coronavirus victims have described being in a state where
they constantly feel like they are drowning.
And this medical worker in Louisiana says that there is a really
good reason for that, because the severe cases that he is treating
are “essentially
drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so
full”…
“When someone has an infection, I’m used to seeing the
normal colors you’d associate with it: greens and yellows. The
coronavirus patients with ARDS have been having a lot of secretions
that are actually pink because they’re filled with blood cells
that are leaking into their airways. They are essentially drowning
in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full. So
we’re constantly having to suction out the secretions every time
we go into their rooms.”
For the moment, there are still enough ventilators in the U.S.
for everyone, but we are still in the very early chapters of this
pandemic.
Over in Europe, many hospitals are already being completely
overwhelmed. In Italy, one doctor is reporting that patients over
the age of 60 are now being
refused access to artificial respiratory machines…
Peleg said that, from what he sees and hears in the hospital,
the instructions are not to offer access to artificial respiratory
machines to patients over 60 as such machines are limited in
number.
things get bad enough, doctors are going to have to make choices
about who lives and who dies here too.
It is hoped that the measures that are being taken all over the
nation will start to slow down the spread of this virus.
But millions of Americans continue to go to work each day, and
many of them simply can’t afford not to work.
In fact, it is being
reported that many delivery drivers continue reporting for
work each day even though they are clearly very sick…
An increasing number of the workers sorting those boxes, loading
them into trucks and then transporting and delivering them around
the country have fallen sick.They have coughs, sore throats, aches and fevers — symptoms
consistent with the coronavirus. Yet they are still reporting for
their shifts in crowded shipping facilities and warehouses and
truck depots, fearful of what will happen if they don’t.
So the next time a delivery truck comes to your home, you may
want to keep your distance.
We have never seen anything like this before. The entire
western world is shutting down simultaneously, and it is being
estimated that nearly a billion people are
now under lockdown orders…
Close to one billion people worldwide were confined to their
homes on Saturday as the global coronavirus death toll shot past
11,000 and US states rolled out lockdown measures already imposed
across swathes of Europe.The pandemic has completely upended lives across the planet,
restricting movement, shutting schools and forcing millions to work
from home.
Needless to say, this is going to be absolutely devastating for
the economy.
If you can believe it, Morgan Stanley is now
projecting a
30 percent decline in U.S. GDP on an annualized basis during
the second quarter…
We now see 1Q GDP dropping by 2.4% as economic activity
has come to a near standstill in March, followed by a
record-breaking drop of 30.1% in 2Q. We estimate that
March will also mark the first drop in nonfarm payrolls, down 700k.
We expect a record-high unemployment rate, averaging 12.8% in
2Q.We assume sharp declines in areas of consumer discretionary
spending like travel, dining out, other services and motor vehicle
spending among others. This will leave a large hole in consumer
spending in 2Q, when we expect real personal consumption
expenditures to contract at a 31% annualized pace.
And the president of the St. Louis Fed is being even
more pessimistic…
In an interview with
Bloomberg, the president of the St. Louis
Fed, predicted that U.S. unemployment rate may hit 30% in
the second quarter because of shutdowns to combat the coronavirus,
coupled with an unprecedented 50% drop in US GDP. That
would be an outcome worse not only than every prior war the US has
(officially) waged, but more than twice as dire as the worst days
of the Great Depression.
It sure didn’t take much to plunge the U.S. into a horrifying
economic depression.
Two months ago, everything seemed just fine to most people.
But now financial markets are crashing, workers are losing jobs
at an unprecedented rate, and many of the businesses that are now
being closed down will never open again.
Fear of the coronavirus has collapsed “the everything
bubble”, and what we have experienced so far is just the
beginning…
the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a
society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is
Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse
Blog, End Of The American
Dream and The Most Important News, and
the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on
dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have
written four books that are available on
Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The
End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.
(#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support
my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my
articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations,
I need those that republish my articles to include this “About
the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with
those government regulations, I need to tell you that the
controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is
republished. The material contained in this article is for general
information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed
professionals before making any legal, business, financial or
health decisions. Those responding to this article by making
comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those
viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael
Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is
republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on
Facebook and Twitter, and anyway
that you can share these articles with others is a great help.
During these very challenging times, people will need hope more
than ever before, and it is our goal to share the
gospel of Jesus Christ with all many people as we possibly
can.
