Armed With More Data, Analysts Alter COVID-19 Cost Forecasts

As the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up in the U.S. in early spring, actuaries and analysts raced to develop estimates of how the disease associated with this new coronavirus would impact health care costs. Now, with cases declining in some areas and rising in others — and crucially, much more data available — some of those estimates are changing.

One analysis that recently received an update is a Wakely Consulting Group report, which was prepared at the request of America’s Health Insurance Plans and originally released March 30. That report estimated that the direct impact of COVID-19 treatment costs — for commercial, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care insurers — would be in the range of $56 billion to $556 billion for 2020 and 2021 combined. Now, Wakely is estimating a range of $30 billion to $547 billion for those two years, with the former figure representing a low infection rate of 10% and the latter representing a high infection rate of 60%.

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