Treating the Unvaccinated | Hacker News Reader

Treating the Unvaccinated

newyorker.com

16 pointsfortran7733 comments

What this heartbreaking article leaves out is that none of these unvaccinated patients or their relatives have to personally pay any of the medical costs for their advanced treatment. (Edit: FYI, the CARES act reimburses providers for any COVID-related costs if you're uninsured: https://www.hrsa.gov/coviduninsuredclaim) At this point, being unvaccinated without an approved medical reason (e.g. immunocompromised) should be treated as a pre-existing condition. If you decline the vaccine, you should have to pay the full cost of the medical treatment.

At this point, being unvaccinated without an approved medical reason (e.g. immunocompromised) should be treated as a pre-existing condition

What are you talking about?

Under current law, health insurance companies can’t refuse to cover you or charge you more just because you have a “pre-existing condition” — that is, a health problem you had before the date that new health coverage starts.These rules went into effect for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2014.

https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/pre-existing-co...

Please don’t be one of those “if you don’t listen to me I hope you die” types; you can catch more flies with honey.

Okay, I got the "preexisting conditions" terminology wrong. I think if you don't listen to medical experts and get a free, universally available vaccine, the rest of society shouldn't pay for the very expensive costs of your choice.

Health insurance is more expensive for smokers generally. Why not antivaxers too?

The ACA does allow health insurers to charge up to 50% more for smokers' health insurance premiums (though some individual states have banned it)

If you are willfully ignorant and cause yourself and others harm, you should be exposed to the full financial cost of your ignorance.

Vaccines are free and widely available; there are no more carrots left to offer the ignorant.

I don’t wish any harm on anyone though. If you assume I’m unvaccinated because I called someone out on their outdated misunderstanding of how pre-existing conditions work it says more about you than me.

That argument falls on its face as soon as you check most other illness. What if you're sick because you don't work out, eat like shit, etc? If you start discriminating on what people did/do to prevent illness when treating them you'll never stop and are bound to have biased judgment.

Unhealthy lifestyle habits are priced into both health and life insurance.

Not familiar with those that much (I live in a public healthcare country where they can't discriminate on bad lifestyle), but from parent it seems they can't change your premium if your lifestyle changes? (Which seems more similar to what op proposed).

Wait a second, you think everyone that hasn't been vaccinated is "willfully ignorant"?

Bruh, c'mon, anyone can look at the numbers and come to their own conclusions (until complete censorship takes that option away). I mean, have you not had coworkers disagree with you about how to implement or do something? If the choice is made to use their idea instead of yours, are you secretly hoping for the project to fail?

If the team is using python and they decide they know better and go rogue and use haskell, I'll hope they fail/be punished. Group cooperation is important on big issues.

Nothing against haskell.

Hoping the project to fail, no. Willing to pay real money when their project failed for predictible causes because they didn't do basic due diligence, also no.

How about no understanding of potential long term side effects whatsoever? Fancy some liver cancer in four years?

What part about 'not been fully studied' and 'experimental' do people such as yourself not understand?

I also feel your frustration, but if one isn't convinced by "You may get this virus and die," then I don't think they'll be convinced by "You may get this virus, die, and your family will be in crippling debt."

I'm done with persuasion. I just want them to pay for the consequences of their decisions.

> If you decline the vaccine, you should have to pay the full cost of the medical treatment.

Would you accept the same approach also for other cases where people could prevent (or decrease risk by orders of magnitude) by their own choices, like "who gets HIV from high-risk unprotected sex, should pay the full cost of treatment"?

If there was a free and universally available HIV vaccine at every corner drugstore, then yes.

They do have condoms at every corner drugstore.

Fine, then let people choose to be treated early on with Ivermectin or HCQ. Lets see what the results bear out.

Considering 'right to try' essentially amounts to 'you are dying, so you can try and experimental drug and see if it works' and the vax is presently experimental and emergency use only, why not permit the other two?

If Ivermectin is allowed as a treatment, then an existing option existed and the vaccines would not have been allowed under the FDA emergency authorization

Bingo. This is also correct.

Obese people next please!

> “On the one hand, there’s this sense of ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’ There’s a natural inclination to think not that they got what they deserved, because no one deserves this, but that they have some culpability because of the choices they made.” He went on, “When you have that intuition, you have to try to push it aside. You have to say, That’s a moral judgment which is outside my role as a doctor. And because it’s a pejorative moral judgment, I need to do everything I can to fight against it. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t remain somewhere in the recesses of my mind. This sense of, Boy, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Why not both?

Yes, it is a judgement that is outside a doctor’s role, and as such, is not one they should be actively making.

But it IS a judgement that SHOULD be imposed in some manner.

To remain unvaccinated comes down to either one, and typically both, of two highly destructive pathologies that run distressingly deep in western society: cultivated ignorance and “muh rights”.

In UK and Israel more than 50% of deaths are vaccinated. Also it is said 90% already has antibodies from infection or vaccine. So wouldn't that mean heard immunity?

>In UK and Israel more than 50% of deaths are vaccinated.

Nope, that's false. This was misreported by the WSJ and they have issued a correction: https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/14088615013063761...

>An important correction on the Israel story. Half of “adults” infected in Israel were fully vaxxed, not half of all cases. About half of the total infections were kids. Means about 25% of infections were in fully vaxxed, and most if not all were reportedly asymptomatic infections

Even if it were true, with a high enough percentage of vaccinated citizens, the base-rate fallacy will ultimately make statements like yours misleading:

https://twitter.com/jeffely/status/1408500890999328770?s=21

In the UK then. You can clearly see that in gov docs, in data tables and described, referenced in the article.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/most-covid-deaths-e...

I am curious, have you at all bothered to even skim the article you linked?

Do you have a point?

The article is a random, that points to the original gov data

No, because young adults have low vaccination rate, so they are still circulating Covid but dying at low rates.

Meanwhile, old adults are almost all vaccinated, but have a much higher CFR.

https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/international/world-news-po...

Thats not a "No", it is a "Yes", you're just trying to explain it

Although you might point at several things, including more than 50% of population being vaccinated

It still shows that the vaccine might not be that effective.

In the UK there is also the strange 12 weeks interval between doses, instead of 4 recommended by manufacturer, and used in other countries

How is it "herd immunity" If the virus is still spreading (and killing)?

Try claiming your life insurance, total and permanent disability or income protection benefits when claims exclude injury, death or disablement caused by experimental treatments and unapproved therapies

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