COVID-19 Tests Don’t Cost Over $3,000
factcheck.org
factcheck.org
“Jennifer Kates, the director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said in a phone interview, ‘there could be other costs incurred.’ Visits to the doctor’s office and the emergency room can cost patients money, she said, noting that some high-deductible insurance plans could effectively charge patients who go to the ER $1,000 or more.”
It also doesn't include the cost of coverage. I have a healthy friend under 40 with a healthy family, and he pays $1200 every month, with a $1,500 deductible.
So, if you pay $18k per year, it might cost you $1,000 or $1,500, but that still doesn't tell us how much it costs for a person to go to the ER and get tested for Covid-19.
For an accurate assessment, they need to report the cost for an uninsured person, or report the total that's being billed to the insurance company.
Coronavirus test or not is just a detail
That would be your out-of-network deductible, since your anesthesiologist is guaranteed to be out-of-network.
Hospital emergency rooms are for emergency services.
Suspected Coronavirus patients should not be presenting to hospital ERs for testing and care unless they are experiencing respiratory distress or other urgent symptoms.
Basic testing and diagnosis should be handled via local doctors. Please call first to discuss the Coronavirus protocol.
Don't go to the Hospital unless you need urgent emergency care for something. You will be charged urgent, emergency care prices.
The real problem is that healthcare in general in the US has absolutely insane costs, not something specific to the coronavirus.
1. Call your family doctor or a local doctor first. The emergency room at the hospital is only necessary if you have immediately life threatening symptoms. If you go to the emergency room, you will receive and be charged for emergency care. This is expensive because it's for emergencies. Call your doctor first!
2. Local doctor's offices have protocols for COVID-19 testing already. This might involve some combination of staying in your car until a practitioner comes to escort you, keeping your hands folded across your chest so you don't touch anything, wearing a mask to minimize the spread from coughing, and going in a separate entrance, and staying in a reserved back room that will be carefully disinfected after you leave. Again, do not go to an emergency room and sit in the waiting room just to be tested.
3. The COVID-19 test itself is being paid for by government funds, as stated in the article. However, you will still be billed for medical services rendered such as the administration of the test. This is one reason why a local doctor is much cheaper than going to a busy emergency room.
4. Do not assume that you're positive for COVID-19 before working with a professional to understand the risk factors and diagnostic criteria. They will likely screen you over the phone to reduce the rate of false positives.
5. If you are concerned about the cost, please ask your doctor what your options are. This is not an uncommon situation and in many cases there are low-cost or free options available.
I’m seeing a sharp increase in the number of young people who don’t understand how their own health insurance works. They just assume it’s awful because that’s what they read in the news.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to tell people that generic insulin is actually only $25/vial at Walmart instead of the hundreds to thousands that they read about in the news. Yes, it's not identical to the newer, longer-acting analogs that cost more, but it's an effective option for those who can't afford the more expensive versions.
This kind of thing is actively driving people away from taking the 10 minutes to understand their health insurance and seeking proper care.
I think the real problem is that people believe they could receive a 3k bill for doing the right thing.
> I’m seeing a sharp increase in the number of young people who don’t understand how their own health insurance works. They just assume it’s awful because that’s what they read in the news.
As someone who grew up with parents who had health insurance, I still had to see them choose to not go to the doctor due to costs. I saw medical bills arrive. I've had to deal with calling to find out if the doctor I needed to go to was in network, and yet still fearing that information was incorrect due to the massive bill I could expect afterwards. I've seen a 5k deductible plan staring me in the face.
Call it anecdotal all you want, but I'm not unique and this is the reason that a lot of young people know their health insurance is trash.
> I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to tell people that generic insulin is actually only $25/vial at Walmart instead of the hundreds to thousands that they read about in the news.
Assuming the other poster is correct that this isn't viable for everyone, it's a little funny given how you're harping on about those millenials/zoomers and all their lack of knowledge.
> This kind of thing is actively driving people away from taking the 10 minutes to understand their health insurance and seeking proper care.
Most people, if they have the average ~4k deductible, are not going to go to the doctor because they fear a 4k bill.
I'm very familiar with it, actually. The idea that it's not viable for some patients is further misinformation, sadly. If you want to understand further, you can search for "insulin analogs".
The generic insulin available cheaply at Walmart does work, but it also requires dosing adjustments due to the different duration. If patients take the time to adjust their dosages, it will work. If patients try to apply the same exact protocol they used with a different insulin analog, they will have problems. This is where the "doesn't work for everyone" myth comes from.
> it's a little funny given how you're harping on about those millenials/zoomers and all their lack of knowledge.
Please, I said nothing about "millenials/zoomers". Most of the diabetics I know are neither millenials nor zoomers.
This is why I hesitate to discuss practical health care advice online. Too many people want to turn it into a political debate. I never suggested our system was great and I fully agree that we need to make changes.
But it's not doing anyone any favors to spread misinformation to amplify the urgency for political change. It's critically important that we all work on spreading the most accurate information to people so they can direct their care responsibly within the bounds of our (flawed) system, rather than using scare tactics to amplify the politically urgency.
My bad, I saw you mentioning young people a few sentences earlier and my brain tied the two together.
> But it's not doing anyone any favors to spread misinformation to amplify the urgency for political change.
Each person has their own level of urgency. Personally, I'm not cool half a million bankruptcies a year due to healthcare costs, but maybe a health-exec from Pfizer is. You have your threshold for urgency, but many people have long since passed theirs. They have perfectly valid reasons for doing so.
>“Human insulins are a reasonable option for many patients with Type 2 diabetes,” said Yale endocrinologist Kasia Lipska, who often prescribes the drugs for patients who can’t afford newer formulations. “But the drug isn’t optimal for everybody. And human insulin sold at Walmart is definitely not the solution to our insulin crisis.”
Nor are Diabetes advocates:
>For people with Type 1 diabetes, human insulins “are harder to live on, lead to worse control, make it harder to hold down a job, impact quality of life,” said James Elliott, a trustee at T1International, an independent patient advocacy group, “and not everyone lives near a Walmart.”
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/4/10/18302238/in...
You can't hide behind "not wanting to engage in political debate" when you yourself misconstrue the reality of the situation to make it seem less urgent than it actually is.
Even if it cost 1/3 of that, it would still be insane.
Test costs USD ~190.- in Switzerland and all insurances are required to cover it under basic care but only suspected cases get tested (You were in Italy, Wuhan or in contact with people who were)
It’s the ancillary hospital services that cause the charges. If you go to a hospital, you have to pay for the usage of the hospital. This is billed to your insurance.
When most people are talking about the test, I think they're talking about the whole process.
Getting tested at a hospital emergency room for 20+ different possible viruses could cost that much, but you shouldn't be presenting to the emergency room for basic testing. That should be handled through your local doctor.
The hospital emergency room is for urgent emergencies. ER doctors are rushing to get things done. Unless you're having severe respiratory distress, you should not rush to the ER for routine Coronavirus testing.
It doesn’t help that trump is going on tv telling people that it’s just a cold and you should go into work if you have it.
I consider myself fairly well informed on these topics and I don't believe it, either (though I'm not in NY). I believe that certain regulators and governments intend for it to be free, but I don't believe it will be that easy when the provider billing and insurance systems get involved.
Maybe tax payers will end up paying in the end though, either through civil courts or some kind of backward-effective legislation.
Wonder what happened to SARS, H1N1 et al. Seems not so clear cut: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/health/coronavirus-outbreaks-...
So: delay the spread so it can die out in summer, and give us time for vaccine before it starts up again in winter?
- yeah, but spinning up the test env and loading data cost >3000s.
1) It doesn't matter how much the test itself costs. It doesn't matter whether it even gets done. The only thing that matters is, how much you're likely to pay if you go to take that test. That's the only variable consumer is considering.
2) Cool that "as of now, the two authorized testing agencies aren’t billing patients for the tests" and that Medicare & Medicaid have a code for this test. That's as of now. The $3000 story broke over a week ago, and nothing here convinces me that this wasn't a representative number up until now.
Source (German): https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/tib-molbiol-berliner-firm...
Actually, go one step further, they need to begin random screening. A lot of people are not presenting severe symptoms and therefore are not going to the hospital, but are still carriers.
Wouldn’t this be true for anyone who went to the ER under similar circumstances? They would have to clear the same tests, pay the same ER fee, etc before being given the COVID-19 test.
These preliminary cost hurdles to testing aren’t going to be removed simply because the test itself is now required to be covered by health insurance and Medicare/Medicaid. And what about the uninsured?
IE - take 64 samples, combine them, test it once.
If positive, divide and conquer?
Wouldn't surprise me if the cost is $3k at this point. The price is another matter.