There’s an article in today’s LA Times on local restaurants requiring vaccination cards to dine there.
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With friends like these . . . .
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As I predicted few days ago, it’s coming…
Don’t Want a Vaccine? Be Prepared to Pay More for Insurance.
(Sorry, behind a paywall)
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Never happen. Now, that doesn’t mean that insurers won’t offer say, a $100 discount, for getting a vax.
I see, we have a visitor from the future amongst us…
In reality, though, it is already happening:
In 2020, before there were Covid-19 vaccines, most major privateinsurers waived patient payments — from coinsurance to deductibles — for Covid treatment. But many if not most have allowed that policy to lapse. Aetna, for example, ended that policy on Feb. 28; UnitedHealthcare began rolling back its waivers late last year and ended them by the end of March.
…
For this reason, there’s logic behind insurers’ waiver rollback: Why should patients be kept financially unharmed from what is now a preventable hospitalization, thanks to a vaccine that the government paid for and made available for free? It is now in many drugstores, popping up at highway rest stops and bus stopsand can be delivered and administered at home in parts of the country.
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Don’t know if y’all have seen this online, but I really like it so thought I’d share. Lots of good thoughts put into it IMO.
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That looks like a forum in Budapest?? Sorry I clicked on it.
your first quote box is correct, but taken out of context. The WH “cajoled” the major insurers to waive copays & deductibles early on in the pandemic to encourage their insured participants to report to a health care facility upon the first symptom. (Many folks, particularly with high deductible plans, were reluctant to seek care until it was too late.)
Well, you can read the context in New York Times. Not that you will…
Now, though, those same “folks” will have to pay for their hospitalization. And, as we all know, those hospitalizations happen mostly to unvaccinated.
If an insurance company has to pay some COVID-related cost, then it will have to price it into the primium it charges. An insured has to pay extra premium if s/he is in a higher risk category.
By law, ACA plans cannot set premiums based on health status/conditions, just age brackets, location, and tobacco use. Congress would have to amend the ACA to allow for premiums based on vax status (and that just ain’t gonna happen).
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I sure don’t want to pay higher premiums because people are choosing NOT to be vaccinated and get very sick with covid as a result. I am fine paying for treatment if breakthrough infections for folks who document that they were fully vaccinated, as there is currently no approved booster in the US.
They do? I don’t think so.
I was thinking about tobacco use. Why is it treated differently but not other risk factors? Doesn’t seem to make sense.
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Tobacco use is linked to so many different adverse health conditions—increased risk of respiratory condition for smoker and all in household, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and many other health issues.
Life insurance policies take into account a number of other risk factors, so the restriction on health insurance seems to be more of a regulatory issue than a health issue.
I am sure the tobacco smokers thought the same. 
And so is Covid-19.
Yes, they don’t even know the many ways the body changes from getting a covid-29 infection.
My D was also given a lot of grief by her friends and co-workers; she was given grief for GETTING the vaccine! In the meantime, four co-workers contracted Covid (one was hospitalized) and the business had the close for two weeks while everybody else was quarantined.
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