Can’t sign in? Forgot your password?
If the address matches an existing account, you will receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password.
Can’t sign in? Forgot your username?
If the address matches an existing account, you will receive an email with instructions on how to retrieve your username
Your password has been changed
The United States faces a national fitness challenge: effective and equitable care for millions of other people with COVID for a long time. It will most likely take years to understand the pathophysiology of this disorder, refine objective diagnostic criteria, and expand effective remedies. Many remedies will be tried, some based on biology, others submitted through for-profit entities, with a limited clinical basis. Meanwhile, it will be difficult for Americans to distinguish fact from fiction, and those with the economic means will pay for the remedies. , regardless of documented efficacy.
Recently, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Deputy Secretary for Health Rachel Levine described how the federal government is responding to prolonged COVID. However, few of these activities deal directly with clinical care and the possibility of reimbursement for people with disabilities. To ensure effective and equitable care for millions of affected people, the United States will need to dedicate itself to creating a National Long COVID Compensation Program (NLCCP).
Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that another 150 million people in the United States have had a symptomatic COVID-19 disease. It is estimated that up to 50% of other people who have had COVID-19 still report symptoms 4 months after infection. But even if only 5% in the end meet the criteria for prolonged COVID, that means 7. 5 million other people would be affected in the United States. By comparison, each year in the United States, about 1. 8 million more people are diagnosed with cancer and 1. 5 million with diabetes.
As more contagious variants emerge and objective diagnostic criteria for prolonged COVID are developed, we can expect the number of patients requiring care to change. Patients with the disease will have mild symptoms or a really extensive disability. And it will be very difficult, especially in other people with diseases such as diabetes or chronic lung or cardiovascular disease, to separate the symptoms of prolonged COVID from those that progress with other diseases.
The burden of the long COVID will fall on various groups: adding the fitness system, which will be responsible for the very important responsibilities of finding diagnostic criteria and effective remedies; many employers, both public and private, that offer disability and health insurance; and fitness insurers that will have what remedies to cover. Most likely, private fitness insurers will pass on any price increases to employers, as well as Medicaid and Medicare, which, given the potential number of patients involved, will want more monetary support. .
Overall, it is highly unlikely to overstate the challenge, complexity, and burden of responding to a new disease that will affect millions of people. It will most likely require billions of dollars and threaten very genuinely to perpetuate persistent disparities in care, policy and outcomes, by race, ethnicity, source of income and region.
Faced with this daunting challenge, the United States deserves to take a look at the example of a highly successful national care program. of vaccines, protect vaccine brands from liability claims, and compensate others who had very rare vaccine-related medical consequences.
The new law added a tax on each vaccine administered, a joint budget and created a formula to compensate other people injured by a vaccine. This is a perfect formula, involving HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ). An applicant, or a plaintiff’s representative, presents evidence that they have been harmed by a vaccine, HHS medical experts verify whether the plaintiff meets the edibility criteria, and the case is referred to the Department of Justice and the “vaccine courts” for a decision.
To help applicants, the program has created a vaccine-like injury table that indicates which vaccines are relevant to which express lesions. Since 1988, more than 5,000 claims have been awarded, basically similar to the flu vaccine. This program has marks of responsibility movements and thus reduced the threat of entering the market, a key step in ensuring a solid source of vaccines and stimulating the progression and advent of new vaccines. Virtually every public fitness organization recognizes that this mechanism has led to one of the wonderful public fitness successes in the United States: very high sustained vaccination rates among all children, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or ethnicity.
With this style in mind, America deserves to create the NLCCP. Several entities can simply give a contribution to such a fund, adding pharmaceutical and other corporations that have made really large profits since the beginning of the pandemic; and fitness and disability insurers, which would benefit from such a program. Lawmakers can also simply add an additional tax on vaccines to fund the program.
Instead of letting disability insurers deal with claims, many of which are likely to be contentious, a panel of experts (perhaps lawyers, perhaps clinical authorities, perhaps either) is tasked with finding out if other people meet the predefined diagnostic criteria and the corresponding ones. refund amounts. (This technique would resemble that of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. )
Importantly, those who do not have disability insurance can also register claims, an option that deserves to help minimize disparities in care and compensation. The same panel can also determine which remedies for long COVID deserve to be covered by the program or health insurers. These determinations would be based on the recommendations of professional medical teams and would have the added advantage of relieving health insurers of the challenge of making those decisions.
Certainly, such a program would face challenges.
First, it can be tricky to outline prolonged COVID objective criteria. However, relying only on subjective criteria will greatly increase the difficulty of differentiating prolonged COVID symptoms from underlying physical and intellectual illnesses.
Second, millions of other people will likely want the program. It will be vital to create an administrative design that guarantees all people, regardless of their technical and electronic expertise.
Third, all Americans in the United States will be eligible for the program, not just those who have health or disability insurance or those who have been vaccinated. Otherwise, really large disparities in care and reimbursement will be incorporated into the program itself.
Fourth, as with any national programme, you will want to identify a good enough investment. I propose several of the above resources, and when combined, they can provide the mandatory while generating a broad political matrix. Fifth, policymakers will want to adapt this timeline to meet express wishes for prolonged COVID. In addition to following NVICP’s style of care, they can also turn to Medicare’s end-stage kidney program and the Ryan White AIDS program.
By caring about and supporting the millions of others who have or will develop disabilities as a result of prolonged COVID, America faces a monumental task. Without a national program, Americans will most likely not get the care they need. disparities in care will inevitably increase, patients will be exposed to useless treatments, and employers and state and federal governments will pay massive prices. COVID patients.