By Michael Snyder
March 24, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -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.
I 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.
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.
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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.
When 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…
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