This past summer my father-in-law had a massive heart attack that put him in the ICU and on a ventilator. The bill for his four day "stay" (he passed) was over $100k with the eventual/actual cost paid by Medicare and his supplemental insurance.
Now let's assume 3 million people need to go to the ICU and use a ventilator (that's only assuming a roughly 1% rate). Now how much is it going to cost our medicare system if we do nothing and allow the virus to burn through our population? How is medicare going to handle the flood of seniors in the hospital?
For those who worry about not having enough ventilators, I'd bet our private health insurance system would "naturally" sieve some of the population out (those with out or who have very poor insurance). The pisser will be those who have family members who sit in the ICU on a ventilator racking up costs only to have their loved on pass and have a massive hospital bill on top of grieving.
More math, if the odds of COVID-19 putting someone in the ICU is only 1%, the odds of someone being admitted to the ICU is just about 50% for a group of around 67 people. In my normal interactions I probably can come up with a list of people I know in that range. (In other words, all of us will know someone severely impacted by this pandemic).
Be smart, be safe and be calm.
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