Vaccination Problems Point to Future Tragedies and Disasters

And of course, this would not be an issue under single payer.

And this is a “you can pay me now, or you can pay through the nose later” issue. But the ol’ Econ 101 free market system wants the profit on the next balance sheet. So really, stop bothering with the “future costs” issues, eh?

The problem isn’t the uninsured, they can get vaccinated through public health facilities. The crisis is looming larger among the underinsured, a growing segment. From Science Daily, refering to a JAMA article:

The study, led by Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston Assistant Professor Grace Lee, found that many underinsured children are unable to receive publicly purchased vaccines in either the private or public sector.

“Childhood immunization is ranked as one of the most important preventive health services we can offer…Due to the increased cost of recently recommended vaccines and the lack of available funding, many states have been forced to adopt more restrictive policies for the provision of publicly purchased vaccines. Underinsured children, who used to be able to rely on public health clinics as a safety net in the past, are now at risk of not getting immunized for serious childhood illnesses.”

Childhood vaccines are funded by a patchwork of public and private sources. While some private health insurance plans cover recommended vaccines for children, an increasing number of plans require patients to pay out of pocket for many of these vaccines. However, children who are either uninsured or publicly insured through Medicaid can receive vaccines through the federal entitlement program Vaccines for Children Program (VFC).

Declines in funding coupled with increases in the number and cost of vaccines has put underinsured children at risk for not receiving important vaccines… The researchers found that in the private sector, 30 states were unable to provide meningococcal conjugate vaccine to underinsured children, and 24 states could not provide pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. In the public sector, those numbers were 17 and 8, respectively…Put another way, roughly 2.3 million U.S. children could not receive publicly purchased meningococcal conjugate vaccine in the private sector, and 1.2 million children could not receive this vaccine even if they were referred to public sector clinics.

“Studies suggest that many private clinicians refer underinsured children to public health clinics for vaccination,” “Unfortunately, a growing number of states no longer provide the most expensive vaccines to these children. The problem may become worse since the trend in private health insurance is to shift to higher deductible plans and in many cases vaccines may not be covered unless the deductible is reached. This could put children from economically vulnerable families at risk of not getting vaccinated.”

… In fact, since 2004, 10 states have revised their policies in order to restrict underinsured children’s access to select new vaccines. (emphasis mine-rm)

For reference, it costs $1170 to fully vaccinate a child in the public sector. (I’m gonna giggle if or when a winger wants to tell me how the the private sector could do it more efficiently). I’ll let somebody else guess how much the treatment for any one of the preventable illnesses might be (hint: start with 5 figures at least). But hey, if you get sick… you can always go to the ER!

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