My head felt like it was melting and I was diagnosed with white brain matter damage.
We wrote my will, we printed all of my life insurance policies out.
We can't breathe from the bills, and we can't breathe because we can't breathe.
Covid-19 is a particularly vicious disease.
A significant number of people with covid show no symptoms at all.
But the virus is still extremely deadly and has killed more than two and a half million people worldwide.
In serious cases, people can be hospitalized for weeks or even months.
When someone is that sick, they're not thinking about money or whether the doctor saving their lives are covered by their insurance.
But when they get out of the hospital, the financial reality sets in.
The day of my discharge was the first time I heard about finance when they said we'd like to send you home with this medication and it's $700.
And I said, what?
The U.S. health care system is notorious for being inconsistent.
Americans can get insurance from several different sources, such as from their job, through a government programs such as Medicare or purchased on
private health insurance exchanges.
These plans can vary dramatically in how much they cost people out of pocket.
The variety in the system makes it difficult to pin down exactly how much coronavirus treatment costs in the U.S.
because it's different for every person.
Even for people with insurance, affordability is an issue.
There is not one access model here in the United States.
And so for preventive services, for treatment, it really depends on people's insurance status, where they are located and the
provider network near them.
CNBC spoke with three people about their experiences paying for their Covid treatment in the U.S.
Here's what they told us.
Since the U.S. health-care system is so inconsistent, it's difficult to collect exact data on treatment costs.
But researchers have gotten creative in order to estimate how much patients with private insurance might be paying for coronavirus treatment.
Researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation examined the average cost of treatment for patients hospitalized with pneumonia.
And they used that data to estimate how much a person with employer provided insurance might pay for Covid treatment in a hospital.
When people get pneumonia and are hospitalized, they had to pay about $1500 out of pocket previously.
This doesn't include amounts that they might have been separately billed by their hospital or provider in addition.
So like surprise bills aren't included.
So we can expect that people will have to pay about that much, about $1500 for a hospitalization for Covid treatment.
There are many factors that affect how much an individual patient might have to pay.
The price can vary based on a person's deductible, which is the amount of money their plan requires they pay out of pocket before their insurance
kicks in.
It also depends on the patient's copay costs, which is what they have to pay out of pocket for each visit to the doctor.
Copayments can vary based on the insurance policy as well as the doctor the patient is seeing.
Some physicians have agreements with an insurance company about how much the service will cost.
Those providers are considered "in-network", but doctors without a predetermined agreement are known as "out-of-network".
Out-of-network doctors get a percentage of the costs from the insurance company, but require the patient to pay for the rest.
Patients typically get surprise bills when they unknowingly see an out-of -network doctor.
Even if researchers can figure out how much a typical hospitalized Covid patient might have paid for their treatment, hospital bills can be just the
start for some covid patients.
Some people who come down with coronavirus end up with long lasting symptoms,
We're really seeing a number of reports of people who report long term fatigue, difficulties with cognition, with
cardiorespiratory fitness.
I think what we're going to find out is that a large portion of that is likely to relate to the significant
cellular level damage that this virus can cause.
This condition is frequently referred to as post covid-19 syndrome.
People affected by it tend to refer to themselves as covid long haulers.
Miranda Erlanson and Christina Garcia have suffered symptoms of Covid-19 since they first got sick.
It's left them with thousands in medical bills.
I have one bill alone that is fifteen thousand dollars.
Sometimes I have to go without my heart medicine.
Sometimes I have to go without my nerve pain medicine.
Sometimes I just have to take less than I'm supposed to.
So I'm constantly living in agony.
Miranda had a specific issue of never testing positive for Covid on an FDA approved diagnostic tests, which made getting treatment difficult.
Right now, Miranda is being followed for post covid-19 syndrome.
So I would go to the E.R.
to get fluids and they would turn me away often because I didn't test positive for Covid.
Roughly a year after she started experiencing symptoms, Miranda took a T-Detect Covid test, which physicians use to detect recent or prior
infections based on T-cell immune response.
The test was approved by the FDA in early March 2021, but Miranda had gotten the test prior to the approval.
Her results showed she had a prior infection.
Cristina and Miranda both spoke about how it was difficult to access treatment because some of the doctors they dealt with dismiss their
symptoms.
The E.R. labeled me with anxiety.
I caught on and quit going to an E.R.
and switched to a different E.R.
They were much more understanding and more thorough, and they had seen others like me.
So I wasn't dismissed there.
It was a more expensive E.R.
It's more like a VIP freestanding E.R.
to pay off a whole lot of extra money to go to.
And it's, you know, out of network.
But the hospitals covered under the insurance were awful.
Because of the complications of their condition, a lot of Miranda and Christina's treatment wasn't covered by their insurance.
The only thing I wish that insurance would pay for that they don't are some of these more in-depth tests that the functional and
integrative doctors use.
Long haulers are getting loads more information and real help through those type of tests.
But insurance won't cover them and they're expensive.
Christina and Miranda are both enrolled in a clinical trial that's testing a specific drug to treat post Covid syndrome, and it's offering them some
hope. But there are many expenses that come with being a part of the trial.
They both must travel out of state in order to participate, which costs thousands of dollars between the transportation, lodging and food they must
pay for over the course of the eight weeks the trial lasts.
Even patients with cases that aren't as severe as Christina's and Miranda's can be left with thousands in medical bills.
Joe Babaian was hospitalized for Covid-19 for about a week, but he never had to be intubated.
He attributes his quick rebound to having received an early dose of Remdesivirwhen he first experienced symptoms.
His insurance covered the treatment.
That Remdesivir I received, you know, being an emergency use authorization, I'm convinced it saved my life.
It was $17,000 for that particular treatment alone.
While Joe doesn't consider himself a long hauler, he has experienced some lingering symptoms that have required after care.
The after care expenses have actually been just as significant as the expenses for inpatient care.
That's the thing with Covid.
It keeps on digging that financial hole.
It's not just a hospital stay.
You know, there's prescriptions and follow ups and more tests.
And of course, that's from myriad different providers with all different billing policies.
The CARES Act, which passed in March 2020, mandated that insurance companies pay for FDA approved Covid diagnostic tests.
However, these government protections did not extend to coverage of coronavirus treatment.
But there are some government resources for certain Americans who qualify.
A program implemented by the CARES Act gives uninsured Americans the opportunity to have their treatment covered by the government.
When Congress passed the CARES Act, they created a fund which is called a Provider Relief Fund.
The Provider Relief Fund tried to give monies to hospitals and physicians when health spending was pretty low.
Physicians and hospitals who do get money from the provider relief fund are required to make sure that they're not billing uninsured people and
covering those costs. Expenses can be billed to the provider relief fund.
But not everyone can get access to the program, even if they technically qualify.
The hospital where the patient was treated must have chosen to participate in the program.
And even if the hospital did enroll in the federal program, the process of applying can be a heavy lift.
The government requires a patient's bills to be coded in a certain way, meaning the hospital has to give a specific diagnosis that meets the
government's standards in order for the patient to be covered.
That means patients might have to go back and forth with the government and the hospital in order to satisfy these requirements.
And when someone is sick enough to be hospitalized with Covid-19, they usually aren't up for the task of navigating that kind of bureaucracy.
Reforming the U.S. health care system has been a political football for decades.
But in December 2020, Congress passed a law called the No Surprises Act.
The legislation requires insurance companies treat out of network services as if they were in network when calculating how much a patient must pay out
of pocket.
Congress is requiring that the hospital or physicians work with the insurance company directly and hold the patients harmless so people will
not get the surprise bills and the insurance company and the hospital will have to negotiate outside what the appropriate payment amount is.
The law, however, doesn't take effect until 2022.
The impact of Covid will likely linger in the health care system for years to come, which means Americans may be in this for the long haul.