Marlon Meyer
Northwest Asia Weekly
With the pandemic being one of the top global health concerns, unvaccinated people are more likely to face higher healthcare costs.
Their odds of being hospitalized, while varying by state, were still significantly higher than those who were vaccinated.
In Washington state, unvaccinated people between the ages of 35-64 are seven times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid-19 than vaccinated people, according to a February 9 report from the Department of Health. For older adults, the odds were eight times higher.
“State data suggests that unvaccinated individuals are more likely to contract Covid-19 and be hospitalized as a result than vaccinated individuals. In addition to health outcomes, this may place a greater financial burden on unvaccinated individuals , increasing health care costs and risk of medical debt at a time when some may also be grappling with unemployment and insurance coverage,” said Josh Liao, Ph.
In Los Angeles County, the contrast is even more stark.
There, unvaccinated people were 23 times more likely to be hospitalized, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier on February 4 and obtained by Northwest Asia Weekly.
Because of this difference, vaccinated people may have a better chance of avoiding medical debt.
Allison Sesso, executive director of RIP Medical Debt, said: “We know that those who are vaccinated are less likely to be hospitalized and often require cheaper interventions, which naturally reduces their medical debt risk. “
For the unvaccinated, however, even if this only translates to slightly higher rates of medical debt, the impact could still be staggering. In the case reviewed by Northwest Asia Weekly, credit ratings marred by medical debt prevented people from renting, getting credit cards, or even qualifying for government health care.
Asian Americans, the largest segment of Medicare new entrants in recent years, may feel immune to the horror stories in the media about unexpected medical debt and the resulting credit damage from Covid-19.
But Bob Mitchell, a former special operations naval trainer and now a lawyer, has defended many Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) clients. Instead, they are more vulnerable to fraud and misrepresentation, he said.
For cultural reasons, AAPI clients may be inclined to pay any medical debt that comes up to them, rather than challenge it, Mitchell said.
Now as the pandemic recedes, more medical debt is due, and fraudulent medical bills appear to be on the rise. This will make it harder for AAPI patients to respond.
“The smallest population I represent will be Asian Americans. It’s a cultural thing. They don’t like being blamed. They’d rather pay than get a lawyer. As a different cultural group, they’re more inclined to just pay money, even if they don’t owe anything,” he said.
But simply paying off an unexpected or fraudulent medical debt can be the start of trouble.
One of Mitchell’s clients, a Pacific Islander, initially agreed to be on record but later requested anonymity.
Despite paying three medical bills accrued during the pandemic, all of them were eventually paid back. According to the lawsuit reviewed by Northwest Asia Weekly, the debt collector deliberately changed the amount owed so even if the man paid off the debt, he technically still owed it, damaging his credit history.
Some people, vaccinated or not, turn to other sources of funding in an attempt to pay off their high medical debt, such as crowdfunding — setting up a website online to request donations.
But scholars say the practice actually cements racial and class hierarchies, and often doesn’t solve the problem.
“Crowdfunding is an unfortunate consequence of the collapse of the American health system, with the same core hierarchy as in privatized healthcare solutions. In fact, the idea that communities and businesses should choose who gets healthcare is the most market-oriented neoliberal A core foundation of health care alternatives and a cornerstone of the opposition to universal health care,” Nora Kenworthy, associate professor at the University of Washington’s (UW) School of Nursing and Health Research, wrote in the 2021 Quarterly Journal of Medical Anthropology. “Like a whetstone: How crowdfunding platforms can create, perpetuate, and value health inequalities.”
In her research, Kenworthy found that the algorithm employed by the app GoFundMe directs viewers to financially successful sites and away from less successful ones. This has brought more success than reality to marginalized groups. It also affects the unvaccinated, because the largest number of unvaccinated people are the unemployed, Ceso said.
With 5.4 million people losing their jobs and health insurance between February 2020 and May 2020, the ripple effect is still playing out through the health care system, Seso said.
When using crowdfunding apps like GoFundMe, those with the most affluent social networks performed well, while those launched by the poor and marginalized had fewer resources to call upon—and despite desperate calls for help, But often nothing.
Additionally, campaigns that emphasize easy and sure cures tend to receive more attention, complicating the fate of people with conditions such as diabetes, which are more prevalent in some marginalized groups. This may also include people suffering from being unvaccinated.
“Stories curated and made public by GoFundMe reinforce a deserved discourse centered on personal, unexpected, solvable tragedies,” she wrote in another paper last year, co-authored with Social Science and Medicine. “Crowdfunding as a On COVID-19: Raising Inequality in Times of Crisis.”
Even a seemingly novel solution to the medical debt problem like crowdfunding can make things worse and entrenched marginalized groups that they are not worthy of care, Kenworthy said.
Mahlon can be contacted by info@nwasianweekly.com.
This health series is supported by funding from the Washington State Department of Health, which has no editorial input or oversight on this content.
