Long COVID: Costs for the German economy and health care and pension system, 2023, Gandjour

[SNT Gatchaman]

Long COVID: Costs for the German economy and health care and pension system
Gandjour, Afschin

Background
Patients with acute COVID-19 can develop persistent symptoms (long/post COVID-19 syndrome). This study aimed to project the economic, health care, and pension costs due to long/post-COVID-19 syndrome with new onset in Germany in 2021.

Methods
Using secondary data, economic costs were calculated based on wage rates and the loss of gross value-added. Pension payments were determined based on the incidence, duration, and amount of disability pensions. Health care expenditure was calculated based on rehabilitation expenses.

Results
The analysis estimated a production loss of 3.4 billion euros. The gross value-added loss was calculated to be 5.7 billion euros. The estimated financial burden on the health care and pension systems due to SARS-CoV-2 infection was approximately 1.7 billion euros. Approximately 0.4 percent of employees are projected to be wholly or partially withdrawn from the labor market in the medium term due to long/post-COVID with new onset in 2021.

Conclusion
Costs of long/post-COVID-19 syndrome with new onset in 2021 are not negligible for the German economy and health care and pension systems but may still be manageable.

Link | PDF (BMC Health Services Research)

 

[rvallee]

Very partial count, and only to the government. So those are only estimates of direct expenses and losses, it seems to ignore all indirect consequences aside from trying to estimate based on no data:

The costs to the German healthcare system due to long/post-COVID were determined based on rehabilitation expenses incurred by the German statutory pension insurance, social accident insurance, and statutory health insurance

However, the number of rehabilitations due to long/post-COVID covered by the SHI could not be directly retrieved because of the absence of diagnostic codes in the dataset [9]. Therefore, rehabilitations of retired patients were projected based on the proportion of retired patients receiving respiratory rehabilitation 6 months after treatment with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) on the intensive care unit due to COVID-19.

They seem content to waste money on useless rituals. And nothing else. Nothing at all. Now that's expensive.

This calculation does not consider rehabilitations of retired patients with long/post-COVID who were not admitted to the intensive care unit. Since no approved therapy was available for long/post-COVID available and the therapy was based on symptoms [14], no significant expenditure on diagnostics, physiotherapy, and other treatments was expected in addition to rehabilitation expenditure.

They don't seem to think it's worth trying to do anything. What a weird mindset, just complete lack of ambition and motivation.

Really they're just wasting huge sums that could solve the problem and find nothing wrong with that, although I don't know where they got that number given the above mention that they can't know:

With an expenditure of approximately 3,000 euros per COVID rehabilitation patient [32], the total expenditure incurred by the German statutory pension insurance and German social accident insurance for rehabilitation was around 332 million euros in 2021.

And they are clearly assuming that rehabilitation is effective. Somehow. Fairy dust, probably? Really just assuming that it magically works. They just spend that money and *magic occurs* people are rehabilitated. Except when they're not:

The similarities between long/post-COVID and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CSF) have been investigated. ME/CSF, the cause of which is still unknown, is also diagnosed in a subgroup of long-COVID patients six months after infection [13]. Estimates of the per capita costs for patients with ME/CSF are generally significantly higher than those for long/post-COVID. However, studies on the costs of ME/CSF are limited if they do not calculate disease-specific costs (e.g., [11]); determining disease-specific costs requires subtracting costs from a matched control group. Furthermore, foreign surveys on ME/CSF also found a high number of self-reported doctor consultations after the diagnosis of the disease ([11], which seems to contradict the above-mentioned findings for long/post-COVID in Germany [27].

Honestly at this point it's becoming very clear that all governments prefer to do nothing, waste far larger sums than what is needed to actually solve it, without even attempting to put any serious effort into it. More money has already been wasted on those pointless rituals. And the losses will keep piling up. Absurd economic policy, spending more money for no results. They're content to just watch the problem grow, and still do nothing about it:

Given that 0.4 percent of employees are projected to be wholly or partially withdrawn from the labor market in the medium term due to long/post-COVID, it appears crucial to monitor incident cases from 2022 on to inform policymakers about the growing size of the problem.

They even say they expect it to grow, unless in their use of language "growing size of the problem" means other fancy magical ideas from fairy land. And find no problem with that. Impressive apathy here.

 

[rvallee]

I guess the answer to this question:

is "we watch the problem grow". Good stuff. They're actually paid for this. Amazing.

I'm sorry that's not fair, it should say "we may watch the problem grow". Let's not get too carried away here.