Originally Posted by
Conundrum
It actually will whether warranted or not. I've had more than a few conversations with health insurers who are forecasting rate increases for it. Just because the test is $120 retail and negotiated down (probably much lower than $100), how much is the provider also charging the insurance company for administering the test? My guess is $100-150. It's too soon to review any claims data though so I can't give you a number. In fact, hospitals didn't even know how to bill insurance companies until mid-March. On April 1, a new ICD10 code was announced.
The largest insurer in our state has about 700k people on health policies. Let's say 10% of their members get anti-body tests at $200 ($50 for the test and $150 for the admin of the test), that's $14m. 25% would be $35m etc. False tests so someone gets another test down the road and the numbers go up. The execs at that insurer said they're looking at 2-3% additional premium in the next year for Covid and antibody testing. A month ago when no one was sure how big this was going to be with ICU admits, they were forecasting an 8-15% insurance premium increase. Seeing what is happening in the state and if things don't blow up, I'm guessing the true numbers will be below 8% increase solely based on Covid19. But, knowing insurance companies, they will take more and use Covid as an excuse with no transparency to actual claims data. Add in an average medical treads of 6-8% without Covid and the rush to get all electives completed that have been postponed (claims are running awesome right now because no elective costs), and I'm guessing insurance companies are going to ask for a lot of extra premium next year and have excuses for why ready.
So, yeah, if there was some medical evidence that showed I was very unlikely to be reinfected if I had antibodies, I'd for sure go get a test.
If I were Core Shot, I'd go anyway. I probably wouldn't even consider that most of these tests haven't shown consistent results. I would also not consider that there are different strains and mutations of the disease. I really wouldn't be typing this part if he wasn't a dick when he assumed I was making an argument against testing when I was asking a simple question because I don't stay up to date by the minute on Covid news.
My opinion, call it humble or not, is the antibody tests should be covered by the feds and it should be a unified effort. The CDC needs the infection rates, mortality, etc to decide how to run our country in this pandemic. I don't understand why private insurers who are funded by their policy holders should foot the bill.
Core Shot-truly sorry you and yours were knocked out by something. My gal is generally a very healthy person and lost her sense of smell and taste for a week and had muscle pains during that timeframe. She isn't currently planning on getting the antibody tests that are readily available here because it isn't going to change her behavior moving forward. We've been SIP together the entire time so one would think I would have been exposed if she had it.
When there is real data showing we are much less likely to get it if we had it, we're both going to jump in the car and go get a test. Right now, the results don't seem to mean much but if we had, our friends had it, and we won't get it again, we're going to be partying with those friends a lot.
