I don’t think it’s that simple, maybe make it so there’s a balance or rebate lowering premiums for those vaccinated so there can’t be any extra profit from it, and no penalty for those with legitimate doctor excused medical reasons for being non vaccinated
OOP costs are the actual problem. your "skin in the game" is the premium you pay and you pay more if you smoke for example. fine. but OOP costs have become a tool of insurance to get you to use less healthcare so they make more profit than your premiums already provide them.
Also, people are already quitting their jobs - how they even have insurance on the first place - over getting vaccinated. It isn’t clear that insurance companies charging more for the unvaccinated would have any positive effect.
I am thoroughly convinced at this point that my premiums are 100% to cover ins company overhead and profit and 0% go towards actual healthcare. Only my OOP goes towards healthcare. Which is paid to the health providers.
co-pay and OOP costs are the #1 thing congress could do to help people with high healthcare costs. by far. it's not even close. and they don't. because they have no pressure. BIG PHARMA!
pperc probably can interpret this better, but for the Moderna vaccine this helps show why a booster (which would apply to Moderna and Pfizer or any other COVID vaccine) is going to be even more long lasting given that your antibody levels are higher than they ever are after just two doses, barring any new insane variant that escapes more immunity. Your antibody levels also get rejuvenated more quickly post-third dose than post-second if you haven't had complete immunity waning. This is a big reason why I think it should be fine to be indoors maskless if you've had a booster right now, but that's my opinion.
It's also interesting to see, again, how the Beta variant actually escapes more immunity than Delta but Delta being so much more contagious is why it quickly overtook it as the dominant strain.
Thread re: Austria's public health approach w cheap masks and free at home tests: https://threadreaderapp-com.transla...l=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=nui
summer surge? A majority of states are surging right now. 3 or 4 counties in Colorado just enacted indoor mask mandates
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...t-cells-gives-better-immune-response-current/ Covid vaccine that creates T-cells ‘gives better immune response than current jabs’ CoVac-1 jab developed and made by academics at the University of Tubingen, in Germany, has strong phase one trial results
To unvaxxed people? 1. Monetary pain may end up getting some percentage of unvaxxed to take the plunge which helps them and society at large. 2. Fuck the unvaxxed, who cares.* *Does not include people medically unable to rcv vax
Until we have universal healthcare we have the system we have. Antivaxxers are rat fucking society. They are likely indirectly killing people and very directly driving hc costs through the fucking stratosphere. Fuck em.
Have to change the mindset about healthcare before we can ever get M4A. Leveraging the healthcare system as punishment is doing the opposite. We need more people to understand healthcare is a right - not fewer.
Imagine a populace that embraced science and had empathy for others. We could've been the best but are likely the worst.
Variant dashboard: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/raj.rajnarayanan/viz/USAVariantDB/USAVariantDashboard Lmbo this guy was a fucking general jfc
Under the existing system the antivaxxers costs ARE going somewhere. Let's assume universal hc isnt coming in the next 2 years (I can't find evidence that it is). That's reality. More:. The carriers are not eating those costs. So which do you prefer? That the antivaxxers costs are spread across all of us or that antivaxxers pay for their choices?
Alright so no one has the right to just opt out of caring for patients with mental health conditions, but it's not unfathomable to say "sorry we can't come to your house"
I prefer that we stop viewing healthcare as something that should be denied to idiots, people we don’t like, or people that make “bad” decisions. We pay the unvaccinated one way or the other - by helping pay the cost of their treatment or by losing their productivity when they don’t seek treatment and end up dying. Healthcare is a right - not a means to exact revenge.
B.1.1.529 goes from zero to over 75% within two weeks in contrast, Delta took about 98 days (or 14 weeks) to go from zero to 75%. Feb 22 to May-31