Traditional Medicare has spent $16.6 billion on Covid-19 hospitalizations for more than 691,000 beneficiaries since 2020, an average of about $24,000 per patient, according to government data released Thursday.
The total taxpayer toll, however, is likely much higher because those figures don’t include spending for the more than 450,000 Covid-19 hospitalizations among beneficiaries in private Medicare Advantage plans.
More than 4.1 million Medicare beneficiaries were infected with Covid-19 from January 2020 through March 20, 2021, data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services shows. Those numbers are based on Medicare fee-for-service claims and patient encounter data from Medicare Advantage ...