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garybeck

(9,932 posts)
Thu Apr 29, 2021, 06:25 PM Apr 2021

Here is how to get more people vaccinated.

Allow the health insurance and life insurance companies to increase the premium rates for people who choose to not vaccinate, and/or lower the rates for people who do.

They already do it with other things. They offer discounts if you get preventative health care, or if you exercise. They charge more if you smoke. Car insurance companies give discounts for good driving records, or for putting a device in your car that shows you don't speed. These are all choices people make and they get a financial benefit because it lowers costs to the insurance companies.

Cutting the rates for people who get vaccinated is just like those examples and it makes total sense. Unvaccinated people have more risk and more costs. that risk and cost should be passed on to the policy holders who make that choice, not the greater population.

Why should people who get vaccinated have to pay for people who choose enough to not get vaccinated?

Unvaccinated people are going to get sick more. they are going to need more medical care. and they are going to die more. We who get vaccinated should not have to pay for that. THEY should.

Refusing vaccination is not a pre-existing condition. It's a choice, and yes you have the right to refuse. But if you refuse to get vaccinated, you should pay the added costs that result. Those of us who choose to get vaccinated should not have to pay for your ventilator, or your doctor visit, or your funeral.

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Here is how to get more people vaccinated. (Original Post) garybeck Apr 2021 OP
That'd make a difference all right once the federal government stopped Hortensis Apr 2021 #1
Health plans are still largely controlled by employers which are largely conservative Shermann Apr 2021 #2
I don't think so garybeck Apr 2021 #4
I agree - incentivizing vaccines will save them money Peppertoo Apr 2021 #5
K&R sheshe2 Apr 2021 #3

Hortensis

(58,785 posts)
1. That'd make a difference all right once the federal government stopped
Thu Apr 29, 2021, 06:57 PM
Apr 2021

picking up the bills. Don't know when that will happen. Seriously, too many are crazy right now to do it.

A leap in spread and death rates would probably do it sooner, and it looks like that will probably happen. The Indian variant B.1.617 has been found in at least 20 countries, including the U.S. Especially frightening, more children are getting it. Or, more accurately, the virus is getting them.

Prizer and Covaxin's makers says their vaccines work against this variant, and no doubt they're all testing like crazy. However, some new cases in Israel were in people who'd been immunized, though I didn't see mention of with which vaccines..

Forbes: It is still early days in understanding the importance of the arrival of the Indian variant in the United States. The B.1.617 variant has all the hallmarks of a very dangerous virus. If indeed it is this variant that is driving the unprecedented exponential increase in infections in India, the potential for trouble here in the United States is real and immediate. We must do all that is possible to identify its spread and to contain it.

At some point it's going to become obvious to everyone that the new outbreaks are in areas with low vaccination rates and probably almost all serious illness in people who haven't been vaccinated.

Shermann

(7,355 posts)
2. Health plans are still largely controlled by employers which are largely conservative
Thu Apr 29, 2021, 07:01 PM
Apr 2021

They aren't going to play ball.

garybeck

(9,932 posts)
4. I don't think so
Thu Apr 29, 2021, 11:15 PM
Apr 2021

Employers don't set the policy of the health care companies. And furthermore, insurance companies look at the bottom line more than anything. The bottom line days that people who are not vaccinated cost them more money. They will save money by incentivizing vaccines

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