Never let a crisis go to waste?
Somebody please correct me if my arithmetic follows Brian Williams, but I’m still trying to see if the $50 Billion that the House proposed to add to Medicaid in response to the coronavirus makes economic sense. I will disclose any and all assumptions:
High end estimates are that 10 million Americans may get coronavirus. One out of 5 Americans is on Medicaid, so 2 Million beneficiaries may be infected by the virus.
Let’s assume, that 15% of those cases require hospitalization (China’s experience) . That’s 300,000 Medicaid beneficiaries. That translates to $167,000 per Medicaid coronavirus case requiring hospitalization.
According to Kaiser Foundation https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/potential-costs-of-coronavirus-treatment-for-people-with-employer-coverage/
“The cost of inpatient admissions for COVID-19 treatment could top $20,000. ”
That’s a few standard deviations away from $167,000. Please tell me if my analysis is wrong, or if this is using a crisis to throw money around.
Founder & CEO, Monocle Health Data, LLC
5 年This is the same Brian Williams that, last week, said that with $550 billion all 330 million US residents could receive $1 billion each and still have $200 billion left over !! He has a serious problem with all those commas and zeroes. There's a reason why they are called "newsreaders" in the rest of the world but in the US they act like they're experts at everything.