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Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic

The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. During a pandemic, the lives saved and economic benefits of a single-payer universal healthcare system relative to the status quo would be even greater. For Americ...

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Autores principales: Galvani, Alison P., Parpia, Alyssa S., Pandey, Abhishek, Sah, Pratha, Colón, Kenneth, Friedman, Gerald, Campbell, Travis, Kahn, James G., Singer, Burton H., Fitzpatrick, Meagan C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9231482/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35696578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200536119
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author Galvani, Alison P.
Parpia, Alyssa S.
Pandey, Abhishek
Sah, Pratha
Colón, Kenneth
Friedman, Gerald
Campbell, Travis
Kahn, James G.
Singer, Burton H.
Fitzpatrick, Meagan C.
author_facet Galvani, Alison P.
Parpia, Alyssa S.
Pandey, Abhishek
Sah, Pratha
Colón, Kenneth
Friedman, Gerald
Campbell, Travis
Kahn, James G.
Singer, Burton H.
Fitzpatrick, Meagan C.
author_sort Galvani, Alison P.
collection PubMed
description The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. During a pandemic, the lives saved and economic benefits of a single-payer universal healthcare system relative to the status quo would be even greater. For Americans who are uninsured and underinsured, financial barriers to COVID-19 care delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission. Concurrently, deaths beyond COVID-19 accrued from the background rate of uninsurance. Universal healthcare would alleviate the mortality caused by the confluence of these factors. To evaluate the repercussions of incomplete insurance coverage in 2020, we calculated the elevated mortality attributable to the loss of employer-sponsored insurance and to background rates of uninsurance, summing with the increased COVID-19 mortality due to low insurance coverage. Incorporating the demography of the uninsured with age-specific COVID-19 and nonpandemic mortality, we estimated that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved about 212,000 lives in 2020 alone. We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a single-payer universal healthcare system over the course of the pandemic. These economic benefits are in addition to US$438 billion expected to be saved by single-payer universal healthcare during a nonpandemic year.
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spelling pubmed-92314822022-06-25 Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic Galvani, Alison P. Parpia, Alyssa S. Pandey, Abhishek Sah, Pratha Colón, Kenneth Friedman, Gerald Campbell, Travis Kahn, James G. Singer, Burton H. Fitzpatrick, Meagan C. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. During a pandemic, the lives saved and economic benefits of a single-payer universal healthcare system relative to the status quo would be even greater. For Americans who are uninsured and underinsured, financial barriers to COVID-19 care delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission. Concurrently, deaths beyond COVID-19 accrued from the background rate of uninsurance. Universal healthcare would alleviate the mortality caused by the confluence of these factors. To evaluate the repercussions of incomplete insurance coverage in 2020, we calculated the elevated mortality attributable to the loss of employer-sponsored insurance and to background rates of uninsurance, summing with the increased COVID-19 mortality due to low insurance coverage. Incorporating the demography of the uninsured with age-specific COVID-19 and nonpandemic mortality, we estimated that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved about 212,000 lives in 2020 alone. We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a single-payer universal healthcare system over the course of the pandemic. These economic benefits are in addition to US$438 billion expected to be saved by single-payer universal healthcare during a nonpandemic year. National Academy of Sciences 2022-06-13 2022-06-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9231482/ /pubmed/35696578 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200536119 Text en Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Galvani, Alison P.
Parpia, Alyssa S.
Pandey, Abhishek
Sah, Pratha
Colón, Kenneth
Friedman, Gerald
Campbell, Travis
Kahn, James G.
Singer, Burton H.
Fitzpatrick, Meagan C.
Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
title Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: the lives and costs that could have been saved during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Social Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9231482/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35696578
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200536119
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