Medicare Funding of COVID-19 Treatments Reduced Health Inequity, Analysis Shows

Medicare funding of COVID-19 inpatient treatments improved overall population health and reduced health inequality, most notably in patients considered socially vulnerable, according to study results published in Value in Health.

“To the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first analysis to quantify the equity implications of funding COVID-19 treatments in the United States,” wrote corresponding author Stacey Kowal, MSc, of Genentech Inc, San Francisco, California, and coauthors.

The novel distributional cost-effectiveness analysis was based on a previously published cost-effectiveness analysis model for COVID-19 treatments. Researchers adjusted the model to factor in the impact of underlying social vulnerability that considered county-level factors and race/ethnicity.

Because of a higher COVID-19 incidence and baseline in-hospital mortality, populations with more social vulnerability yielded larger per capita health benefits from Medicare funding of inpatient COVID-19 treatments, according to the study.

Medicare funding of inpatient treatments for COVID-19 in 2020 cost an estimated $25.83 billion. However, the cost translated into 735,569 quality-adjusted life years gained and a 0.234% reduction in the population-level burden of health inequality.

“As of 2019, the United States spent approximately $3.8 trillion annually on health care,” researchers wrote. “With a total intervention cost of $25.83 billion, funding of inpatient COVID-19 treatments would use approximately 0.68% of the health care budget.”

Reference:
Kowal S, Ng CD, Schuldt R, Sheinson D, Cookson R. The impact of funding inpatient treatments for COVID-19 on health equity in the United States: a distributional cost-effectiveness analysis. Value Health. Published online September 30, 2022. doi:10.1016/j.jval.2022.08.010