US Medicare Flu Shots "Are Cost-Effective"

The first analysis of the US Medicare preventive influenza coverage, available since last year, indicates that it is cost-effective, although the exact savings are hard to estimate since the Health Care Financing Administration does not pay all the costs associated with an illness that results from influenza, says HCFA Administrator Bruce Vladek.

Despite the extension of Medicare cover to flu prevention, it was estimated that "barely half" of all beneficiaries received flu immunization last year, he said. Only about one-third of Medicare enrollees were vaccinated, and another 10%-20% may have received shots from other public health sources. The HCFA's aim is to raise levels of immunization to 60% by the year 2000, which Mr Vladek calculated would mean immunizing a further 3.3 million people over and above the estimated 50% of beneficiaries who were vaccinated this year.

The cost of immunizing 50% of the eligible population over the 1994-95 influenza season, totaling an estimated 15 million shots, would cost medicare somewhere in the region of $150-$175 million, according to Mr Vladek. However, he commented that the savings provided by such a program are "better than a dollar-and-a-half to a dollar ratio," based on a recent study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine which found that flu vaccinations among elderly people reduced net health costs during the flu season by an average of $117 per person.