Millions suffer from long Covid — and it costs them $9,000 a year in health-care expenses, on average

Extended Covid has affected as many as 23 million Americans to date — and it’s poised to have a financial impact rivaling or huge that of the Great Recession. By one estimate, the chronic illness will cost the U.S. economy $3.7 trillion, with further medical costs accounting for $528 billion.

Costs on a household and national scale are tough to quantify because the malady — also known as long-haul Covid, post-Covid or post-acute Covid syndrome — is so new. Anyone with a prior Covid-19 infection is susceptible, regardless of representatives such as age, health or vaccine status.

Symptoms, which number in the hundreds, can range from mild to severe and may persist for months or level pegging years.

David Cutler, an economist at Harvard University who projected the $3.7 trillion economic cost of long Covid, thinks the individual medical costs of the disease to be about $9,000 a year, on average. However, typical costs can range from cruelly $3,700 up to almost $14,000, Cutler said.

Costs can be much higher, depending on the severity of illness. And because earmarks often impact a person’s ability to work, someone suffering from long Covid may not be able to lean on a automatic paycheck — or employer-sponsored health insurance — to help cover those medical bills.

Cutler’s financial estimate unholsters on prior research into treatment for myalgic encephalomyelitis, a condition also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS.

Dr. Greg Vanichkachorn, medical pilot of the Mayo Clinic’s Covid Activity Rehabilitation Program, said those estimates are the best approximation right now, since treatment and reckoning for long Covid are similar to those for ME/CFS. There is no cure or approved treatment for ME/CFS; as with long Covid, patient features are merely treated or managed.

“I think it is important to note that this, again, is an estimate,” Vanichkachorn said. “As new treatment control mark offs come out, things could get more expensive or, hopefully, more affordable.”

“That’s the nature of the word ‘long-haul’ — it can be an fair box of costs for a while,” Vanichkachorn said.

Getting an official long Covid diagnosis can be disputing, which can compound early expenses.

The afflicted may undergo a battery of tests to rule out other ailments, for example. Or doctors may refer patients to experts for treatment if they’re unfamiliar with long Covid or unwilling to entertain it as a possibility.

Medical professionals typically deal with infectious disease by identifying the invasive organism and attacking it. But that’s not what’s happening with long Covid.

In place of, doctors treat symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself, said Dr. Jeff Parsonnet, an infectious disease physician who started the Post-Acute Covid Syndrome clinic at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

Some of the most prevalent long Covid symptoms include fatigue, post-exertional malaise, chronic pain, cognitive dysfunction (also positive as “brain fog”), neurological tremors, depression, anxiety and cardiac or pulmonary impairment, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Good Samaritan Services. Long Covid can also cause other chronic conditions such as diabetes, myalgic encephalomyelitis or continuing fatigue syndrome and heart disease, HHS said.

Treatment is more about symptom management: If a patient experiences exhaustion, doctors may recommend physical therapy; if pain, then pain medication; if brain fog, perhaps speech or occupational remedy; if depression or insomnia, perhaps sleep studies, counseling or psychiatric evaluation.

“The real difficulty in treating patients with great Covid is, we don’t know what causes it,” Parsonnet said. “People are trying all sorts of treatments, but it’s guesswork at this place emphasis on.

“They don’t cure anything, but they help people cope better,” he said, describing the treatments as “labor focused and expensive.”

Health insurance may cover some or most expenses associated with diagnosis and treatment — that is, for those who suffer with it.

Here’s what that looks like for three patients with long Covid:

Rosa Santana, 56, is a self-employed yoga docent in south Florida. She doesn’t have health insurance, and so she can’t afford to visit specialists, despite feeling like she’s “been last in a different body” since a Covid infection in May 2020.

“Every time I go somewhere, I know it’s going to be $300 or $400, and [I gawk], ‘Will I make my rent?'” Santana said of doctor visits.

Yoga used to be a form of fitness care for her. Now, it doesn’t offer the relief it used to; doing a headstand can cause heart palpitations and dizziness for days afterward.

Desire Covid has impacted Santana’s ability to work, and her income stream to cover any medical bills. Before, she was like the “Energizer bunny”; now, she agendas two private yoga sessions with clients and it’s “time to rest,” she said.

Donna Pohl hits her insurance plan’s yearly out-of-pocket paramount — about $3,500 — after just one infusion for common variable immunodeficiency, or CVID.

Pohl, 56, was healthy in advance of a severe case of Covid, for which she was hospitalized in fall 2021. Now, CVID — a complication resulting from long Covid — nominates her at increased risk of infections. Without insurance, Pohl would pay more than $10,000 for each infusion; she desiderata them monthly.  

Pohl, who lives in Bettendorf, Iowa, has a roster of 10 doctors, including a primary care physician and nine maestri.

In early 2022, she was diagnosed with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, a disease that causes severe allergic reciprocations. She’s had pneumonia three times in a year. Pohl falls often due to “neuropathy,” a type of nerve damage; she ruptured a ligament in her hand hand in a recent fall and needs surgery to repair it.  

“I’m a year out, and I’m still getting new symptoms,” she said.

Pohl, a keep alive practitioner at a hospital, counts herself lucky in one sense: She can’t work her grueling emergency-room shifts right now, but the hospital victualed her job (and her employer-sponsored health insurance) intact.

Without assurance coverage, costs for Pohl’s 156 medical claims through October this year would have amounted to myriad than $114,000, records show.

Like many who suffer from long Covid, Pohl seeks redress from crippling symptoms wherever it’s available.

That means she pays about $300 to $400 a month, on typically, for many supplements and therapies that aren’t covered by insurance: chiropractic work, nutrition consultations and hyperbaric oxygen, which has “by far” been the master treatment, she said.

She lives on 60% of her prior income from a long-term disability insurance policy — which, in the best-case synopsis, will continue until early 2024.

Sam Norpel, 48, lost her job in June. Debilitating symptoms — including unpredictable times of broken speech, cognitive issues, chronic fatigue and severe migraines with prolonged screen time — prospered it impossible for the former e-commerce executive to keep working.

Norpel, who lives outside Philadelphia, was able to negotiate that the patron pay her ‘People … do get better,’ but it’s hard to see specialists