Long Covid’s financial devastation: $8,000 in credit card debt, ruined retirement plans

It took three months for Teresa Harding to open her termination letter.

“I could not have a look at it,” Harding, 47, stated. For seven years, she’d labored at a ache administration middle in Lexington, Kentucky. “I loved my co-workers and our sufferers.

“It was a enjoyable, thrilling job,” she added.

However after a critical bout with Covid in July 2021 that landed her within the hospital, Harding by no means acquired higher. Unable to work, she was laid off in January.

“I simply sit at house, watching films that I’ve seen earlier than however do not keep in mind,” Harding stated. “I’ve misplaced my objective.”

She and her husband, Roy, additionally must pay round an additional $300 a month for therapies for her lingering signs of reminiscence loss, extreme fatigue and migraines.

“We’re barely making ends meet,” Harding stated.

On high of the toll taken on their well being, sufferers with lengthy Covid — a persistent sickness with signs that persist for months or years after an infection — describe a devastating influence on their funds.

Practically half of individuals with lengthy Covid reported elevated medical bills, in response to a latest survey performed by the Affected person Advocate Basis. The nonprofit polled 64 folks with the situation between 2020 and 2022. Greater than a 3rd of respondents stated their revenue had gone down on account of lengthy Covid.

“Lengthy Covid is a major instance of a situation that may create massive bills as a result of it has a number of signs, any of which may require distinct medicines or therapies,” stated Caitlin Donovan, a spokesperson for the Nationwide Affected person Advocate Basis, the PAF’s sister group centered on academic assets.

“It additionally straight threatens sufferers’ capability to work persistently,” Donovan added.

As many as 23 million Individuals are battling the persistent situation, and “this quantity will solely proceed to develop as Covid-19 continues to flow into,” in response to a latest report by the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers. The federal government company warned that the sickness could have an effect on folks’s monetary stability, “resulting in an elevated probability of eviction or homelessness.”

Though the Biden administration is researching lengthy Covid and gathering activity forces to deal with it, sufferers nonetheless describe difficulties navigating the prevailing security web and the absence of any particular new protections or help to which they will flip. Earlier within the public well being disaster, the federal government expanded unemployment advantages and despatched direct funds to households.

“Lengthy Covid is as a lot a part of the pandemic as is the acute section, throughout which the federal government went to nice lengths to deal with folks and save lives,” stated Oved Amitay, president of the Lengthy Covid Alliance, an advocacy group. “We should always have the identical urgency and intentional effort to deal with this.”

Practically three years after Sharon Sunders acquired Covid, she’s nonetheless coughing.

Within the spring of 2020, when months had handed since she’d first contracted the virus, Sunders tried to return to her job as a challenge supervisor at a advertising company in Minneapolis.

Nearly instantly, she realized she wasn’t up for it.

“There is no approach I may preserve working,” stated Sunders, 59. “My reminiscence stinks.

“I am brief on breath once I speak or transfer round,” she added. “There’s extreme exhaustion, too.”

Thankfully, Sunders had incapacity insurance coverage via her job and has been in a position to reside off these funds. Nonetheless, they cowl nearly half of her prior earnings.

“It is sufficient to satisfy our primary wants, however not the rest,” she stated.

Sunders had deliberate to work for not less than 5 extra years to construct up her nest egg. These plans at the moment are foiled, and he or she and her husband, Joel, are contemplating starting to withdraw from their retirement financial savings years earlier than they’d hoped.

“It is had a fairly dramatic impact on my retirement planning,” she stated. “It is scary.”

She’s additionally been hit with a slew of further prices associated to her situation.

“They’ve finished MRIs of my coronary heart and lungs; I have been to cardiologists and pulmonologists,” Sunders stated. “I’ve had extra assessments than I can keep in mind.”

One Harvard College researcher estimated that lengthy Covid may go away sufferers with an additional $9,000 a 12 months in medical bills.

Over the past two years, Sunders has additionally been denied twice for Social Safety Incapacity Insurance coverage, the federal profit meant to complement the revenue of these bodily unable to work.

The Biden administration introduced in July 2021 that lengthy Covid may very well be thought of a incapacity underneath the Individuals with Disabilities Act, however sufferers and consultants say it is extremely tough for these with the situation, which could be difficult to diagnose, to get accepted.

“Lots of people with lengthy Covid are being denied Social Safety incapacity insurance coverage,” stated Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, professor and chair of the Division of Rehabilitation Drugs on the College of Texas Well being Science Middle at San Antonio. Verduzco-Gutierrez works primarily with Covid sufferers via the clinic she established in 2020. She additionally spends lots of her time on incapacity purposes.

Of the lengthy Covid sufferers she has seen, solely 2 out of fifty who’ve utilized for SSDI have been accepted to this point, she stated.

“They could not have the assets to undergo the method,” Verduzco-Gutierrez stated. “They’re having to rent attorneys. A few of them are simply giving up.”

Sunders is adamant that she qualifies for the profit, and refuses to surrender. She’s at present concerned in her third attraction of the federal government’s determination to reject her.

However the battle has worn her down much more.

“I normally have a few good hour a day,” she stated. “It is laborious for me to answer all these requests for medical data.”

To this point, the Social Safety Administration has flagged about 44,000 incapacity claims nationally that embody Covid as one of many medical circumstances, in response to company spokeswoman Nicole Tiggemann, making up simply 1% of all incapacity purposes the company has acquired.

To be accepted, “an individual should have a medical situation or mixture of circumstances that forestalls the person from working and is predicted to final not less than one 12 months or end in dying,” Tiggemann stated.

Sunders needs the Biden administration would do extra to assist these financially battling lengthy Covid.

“Our authorities is abandoning us,” she stated. “However I am just the start; there is a tidal wave of us coming.”

Harding feels the identical.

“I learn in my assist teams each day how persons are shedding their jobs as a result of they’re not bodily in a position to carry out them, however you may’t reside on nothing,” Harding stated. “If the federal government would not acknowledge what is going on on, you are going to have tons of individuals with out houses, going hungry.”

The White Home didn’t reply to requests for remark.

When her paychecks stopped coming in, Harding needed to money out her 401(okay) retirement financial savings. She had about $15,000 within the account.

Within the following months, she and her husband have additionally racked up greater than $8,000 in debt on their bank card.

“We put meals, fuel, medicine and hospital payments on it to verify we’re in a position to pay for our automotive and residential,” she stated.

Harding utilized for SSDI in August, however hasn’t heard again but. The wait is worrying. And an individual within the Social Safety workplace had been discouraging.

“They stated that it is normally a two- to four-year battle to get it,” she stated.

— Jessica Dickler contributed reporting.