Nearly a year after COVID-19 vaccines became freely available in the US, one-fourth of American adults remain unvaccinated, and a picture of the economic cost of vaccine hesitancy is emerging. It points to financial risk for individuals, companies, and publicly funded programs.
Some employers are looking to pass along a risk premium to unvaccinated workers, not unlike how smokers can be required to pay higher health premiums. One airline said it will charge unvaccinated workers $200 extra a month in insurance. “I’ll get paid less,” said Royce, who expects to take a $40,000-a-year pay cut. “But I’m moving for my own personal freedom to choose.”As the pandemic enters its third year, the number of US patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is near a 17-month low. Most Americans are vaccinated, and the country is regaining a semblance of normalcy, even as authorities predict a coming uptick in infections from the BA.2 subvariant.
Kaiser estimated that over that six-month period, which included the Delta wave, vaccinations could have averted 59% of COVID-19 hospitalizations among US adults. Kaiser tallied 690,000 vaccine-preventable hospitalizations, at an average cost of $20,000. And it estimated vaccinations could have prevented 163,000 US deaths over the same period.
For some insurance plans, the cost to a hospitalized COVID-19 patient can exceed $8,000 just for “in-network” services, she added. The expenses could balloon for the uninsured and those turning to out-of-network care. Still, the United States has one of the largest COVID-19 vaccine holdout rates among highly developed countries, as some question the need for getting the shots or bristle at government or workplace mandates.
New York City, which requires city workers to be vaccinated, fired more than 1,400 of them last month who hadn’t received a vaccine shot by the city’s deadline, while around 9,000 other workers remained in the process of seeking exemptions to the requirement, city figures show. The vast majority of the city’s 370,000-person workforce is vaccinated.