New macroeconomic insights on the impacts of Long Covid in the UK

"Long Covid is now prevalent in the UK population, with the most recent estimates in March 2023 revealing 1.9 million people living with the condition, of which 1.6 million people are working age.

With a growing evidence base revealing the impact of Long Covid on health and livelihoods, and long-term uncertainty over healthcare funding commitment there are questions about the long-term economic implications for wider UK society.

Cambridge Econometrics’ new report draws on the latest available evidence to examine the future impacts of Long Covid to 2030, using our macroeconomic model E3ME. The report considers trends such as future prevalence, effects on the ability to work and the costs of Long Covid treatment, and is one of the first macroeconomic impact assessments of Long Covid as a long-term condition with wider societal effects."

https://www.camecon.com/macroeconomic-impact-long-covid-uk/

Direct link to report, https://www.camecon.com/wp-content/...n-the-UK_Cambridge-Econometrics_March2024.pdf

 

"At an individual level, cost estimates of Long Covid treatment are now emerging with Mu et al. (2023) finding a cost per person with Long Covid of £3,350. This cost estimate is higher than for most other comparison groups considered over the period (January 2020 to January 2023). This figure is also higher than the estimated costs of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME), which might otherwise have offered some proxy value for the costs. Nearly half of people with Long Covid are thought to suffer from CFS/ME (Salari et al., 2022) and the Optimum Health Clinic Foundation (2017) estimated health costs of £1,370 per person per year. Compared to other chronic conditions, the cost per person with Long Covid is slightly higher compared to per person expenditure needed for those suffering from coronary heart disease (£2,995), diabetes (£2,364) or hypertension (£2,706), but below the per person cost of those with COPD (£4,114). The comparison costs for coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and COPD cover primary, secondary and prescription costs and are based on data published by Public Health England (2020) and adjusted by inflation (ONS, 2023, dataset ID: MM23) to reflect 2023 prices."

 

The economic costs of supporting people who qualify for the highest rates of out of work and disability benefits, plus full housing benefit and council tax support, are more than £30K per person per year. That's before administrative costs, assessments, etc.

Multiply that by a hundred and you have the budget for a decent sized research project. Multiply it by tens of thousands, and you wonder who in God's name thinks it's a good idea not to make it an urgent priority.

 

This is a wild underestimation. It speaks of a £1.5bn hit to the GDP, when the numbers are closer to400K with severe limitations, not only out of work but requiring costs from government and their families, much of which is diffuse and hard to calculate. Average salary in the UK at £35K makes it £15B alone in lost wages. And that's on top of health care costs that literally bring nothing for every pound spent. In their estimate they only have 138K out of work, seems low, but it doesn't count the many times more who are far less productive, making mistakes at work and so on.

One smart thing they do argue is that spending a commensurate effort here isn't even an additional expense, it's merely a shifting of existing costs towards productive expenditures instead. The money is being spent, including in health care costs, it just brings nothing, might as well be burning it in a mindfulness circle. There is nothing to gain from ignoring it, and doing something about it isn't even cheaper on the short term, while actually solving a chronic loss that has been compounding for decades. Doing nothing is in the rare lose-lose-lose category of things where everyone loses, even the people responsible for the scam, insurance companies, who still end up paying something for an expense that could have long been eliminate.

The health care costs alone are a shocking display of waste. They bring absolutely nothing with that money. It's more than most conditions, and it literally brings negative results, because what they choose to do makes everything worse for everyone. Although the lesser amount spent on ME/CFS says a lot about the likely direction of those costs: going down. But that's just direct expenses, the indirect losses add up anyway.

Perhaps the main factor here, one that is impossible to model and most people cannot wrap their heads around: in a few years, most jobs will be replaced by AIs and employment as we know it will be a thing of the past. Right now we are still in a neoliberal expansionist phase obsessed with full employment, to the point where macroeconomic decisions about what counts as full employment explicitly excludes most people with Long Covid and chronic illnesses: not able to work, but not administratively considered disabled are removed from the calculation and simply considered economically inactive.

But soon full employment will not even be a concern anymore. I don't know what that means for us, but it's clear that even getting us back to work has never been a real motivation, governments are content with simply not making us part of that calculation and pretending like we don't exist.