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Zorro

(15,691 posts)
Mon Aug 2, 2021, 09:12 PM Aug 2021

Don't Want a Vaccine? Be Prepared to Pay More for Insurance.

America’s Covid-19 vaccination rate is at around 60 percent, for ages twelve and up. That’s not enough to reach so-called herd immunity, and in states like Missouri — where a number of counties have vaccination rates under 25 percent — hospitals are overwhelmed by serious outbreaks of the more contagious Delta variant.

The vaccine resisters offer all kinds of reasons for refusing the free shots and for ignoring efforts to nudge them to get vaccinated. Campaigns urging Americans to get vaccinated for their health, for their grandparents, for their neighbors, to get free doughnuts or a free joint haven’t done the trick. States have even held lotteries with a chance to win millions or a college scholarship.

And yet there are still huge numbers of unvaccinated people. Federal, state and municipal governments, as well as private businesses continue to largely avoid mandates for their employees out of fears they will provoke a backlash.

So, how about an economic argument? Get a Covid-19 shot to protect your wallet.

Getting hospitalized with Covid-19 in the United States typically generates huge bills. Those submitted by Covid patients to the NPR-Kaiser Health News “Bill of the Month” project include a $17,000 bill for a brief hospital stay in Marietta, GA (reduced to about $4,000 for an uninsured patient under a “charity care” policy); a $104,000 bill for a fourteen-day hospitalization in Miami for an uninsured man; possibly hundreds of thousands for a two-week hospital stay — some of it on a ventilator — for a foreign tourist in Hawaii whose travel health insurance contained a “pandemic exclusion.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/opinion/health-insurance-unvaccinated.html

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Don't Want a Vaccine? Be Prepared to Pay More for Insurance. (Original Post) Zorro Aug 2021 OP
Wow. nycbos Aug 2021 #1
How about no uospital write offs if not vaxed? SheltieLover Aug 2021 #2
Been waiting for something like this to happen. If unwilling to reduce a risk Lettuce Be Aug 2021 #3
This message was self-deleted by its author Chin music Aug 2021 #6
Good. sheshe2 Aug 2021 #4
This will get them on track..maybe not rich idiots, but most PortTack Aug 2021 #5
Good. Smokers were charged more for insurance, so let the unvaccinated pay. sinkingfeeling Aug 2021 #7
DO IT Skittles Aug 2021 #8
Seems fair Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin Aug 2021 #9
Kick dalton99a Aug 2021 #10

nycbos

(6,033 posts)
1. Wow.
Mon Aug 2, 2021, 09:15 PM
Aug 2021

This will make the first time in the history of the United States where health insurance companies are the good guys.

SheltieLover

(57,073 posts)
2. How about no uospital write offs if not vaxed?
Mon Aug 2, 2021, 09:16 PM
Aug 2021


And be put at end of admission list so normal, thinking, functional vaxed folks can get necessary care.

Lettuce Be

(2,336 posts)
3. Been waiting for something like this to happen. If unwilling to reduce a risk
Mon Aug 2, 2021, 09:22 PM
Aug 2021

you should certainly pay higher rates -- they charge more if you are a smoker after all.

Response to Lettuce Be (Reply #3)

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