Background
It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all spheres of life, including healthcare. In the United States and all over the world, it led to a dramatic growth of national healthcare spending as the prevention and treatment of the infection required the development and implementation of new measures, the involvement of all healthcare providers, and the manufacturing of pandemic-related products. Thus, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Office of the Actuary (2021), the U.S. health sector has experienced “a 9.7% growth in total national healthcare spending, bringing spending to $4.1 trillion” (para. 1). Federal public costs also included the preparation of medical facilities, the development of vaccines, and COVID-19 testing. Moreover, expenditures were determined by the increased number of patients as well. At the same time, healthcare-related costs for individuals were controlled by public insurance – thus, private insurance and out-of-pocket spending of citizens declined.
Increase in Healthcare Costs in the United States
In the United States, the increase in healthcare services costs is strongly associated with hospitals’ massive expenses that have several major reasons. First of all, considering rates of COVID-19 infection and other diseases, the number of patients has dramatically increased, leading to additional expenses for procedure materials, drugs, and other medical supplies (American Hospital Association, 2022). Moreover, due to the peculiarities of coronavirus, the length of stay for patients has increased as well. At the same time, according to the American Hospital Association (2022), “hospitals did not receive any government assistance through the COVID-19 Provider Relief Fund (PRF) to help mitigate rising expense” (p. 1). In this case, medical facilities are forced to increase the costs of healthcare services to cover additional expenses that were also impacted by workforce-related expenses caused by healthcare providers’ mass resignations due to burnout and workloads. In order to avoid substantial shortages of healthcare specialists, hospitals had to recruit them through contracts with staffing agencies, the costs of which had increased due to the pandemic as well.
References
American Hospital Association. (2022). Massive growth in expenses and rising inflation fuel continued financial challenges for America’s hospitals and health systems [PDF document]. Web.
Office of the Actuary. (2021). National health spending in 2020 increases due to impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Web.