What percent of GDP would we have to give to the health care industry in order to have enough Covid care capacity?

by philg

“U.S. Hospitals Feel Strained as Virus Cases Surge Again” (NYT, today):

As the Delta variant fuels hospitalizations in the U.S., health care systems struggle.

Health officials may be bracing for the Omicron variant to sweep through the country, but the Delta variant remains the more imminent threat as it continues to drive an increase in hospitalizations.

Health care workers said their situations had been worsened by staff shortages brought on by burnout, illnesses and resistance to vaccine mandates.

More than 55,000 coronavirus patients are hospitalized nationwide, far fewer than in September, but an increase of more than 15 percent over the past two weeks, according to a New York Times analysis. The United States is averaging about 121,300 coronavirus cases a day, an increase of about 27 percent from two weeks ago, and reported deaths are up 12 percent, to an average of about 1,275 per day.

Americans pay nearly 20 percent of GDP into the health care industry. 1 out of every 6055 Americans is hospitalized with/from Covid. That’s 0.017 percent of us. Nobody liked my April 2020 idea of building strip mall Covid care clinics like renal dialysis centers. Nobody likes the proven-to-work idea of home care for medium-sick Covid patients (NYT). So we’re apparently stuck with the model that everyone who needs supplemental oxygen will get it in a hospital bed (of which we have about 920,000). The NYT informs us that we don’t have enough capacity after paying 20 percent of GDP to the health care industry. So that leads to today’s question: how much would we have to pay in order to fund sufficient capacity?

(A friend is a business executive at a VA hospital. He said that the VA system set up some high-capacity Covid wards with appropriate ventilation systems to protect the rest of the hospital (filtering the exhaust air, unlike at private hospitals that dump Covid aerosols out into the environment!). He said that private hospitals won’t do this because Covid surges don’t happen often enough and therefore, profitable though it might be to treat an actual Covid patients, it wouldn’t be profitable to set up a big section that is usually idle.)

Note that Florida is edging out of the safe zone, according to CovidActNow. But, on the other hand, hardly anyone cares enough to talk about Covid, masks, vaccines, etc. From Marco Island, yesterday:

5 thoughts on “What percent of GDP would we have to give to the health care industry in order to have enough Covid care capacity?”

  1. 1 out of every 6055 Americans is hospitalized with/from Covid.

    So, roughly 50,000 Covid hospitalizations right now? At $22T in GDP, and $4.4T in health care spend, the health care industry is receiving $88,000,000 annually per Covid occupied bed and is strained as a result.

    Please check my math.

    P.S. Sharks are most active at sunset.

  2. Learned in Hawaii how to check for sharks: Dip finger into water then lick finger. If it tastes salty then there are sharks!

  3. “Note that Florida is edging out of the safe zone, according to CovidActNow. But, on the other hand, hardly anyone cares enough to talk about Covid, masks, vaccines, etc.”

    Everyone in Florida except for “Dr” Phil…he is in Florida and blogs about Covid, masks, vaccines every day. Still does his “mask sign” tourism. Am I the only one to see the irony?

    “Dr” Phil: Give it a rest! You’ve made it! You are part of the filthy idle rich and you’ve moved closer to the anointed one to bask in his orange aura. If no one around you cares about Covid, and clearly you’ve decided it is no big deal, why let it occupy such a large part of your thinking? 80% of the pictures on this blog from the famed photo.net guy are of mask signs. What a waste.

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