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Comment by jackson1442 | Hacker News Reader

Generally medical gridlock hasn’t been a problem, but this is a unique case in that ICU beds are filling up in some regions leading to _entirely preventable_ illness and death that is unrelated to covid.

Once that stops happening, I will care significantly less. But if I have the risk of not having an ICU bed if I get into a car crash because people aren’t getting vaccinated, that’s an unacceptable social outcome to me.

My personal take is that insurance should progressively cover less of covid treatment of unvaccinated (by choice- minors and immunocompromised being excluded from this policy) patients until it is having a minimal impact on our healthcare system. If people don’t want to get the vax, that’s fine, but I’m not pooling for your medical bills.

Sure, it could be played into a “forever war” by reducing hospital/ICU capacity, but I don’t really see a benefit to doing that.

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One of the issues with that argument is: If Biden's workplace vaccine mandate goes through, many of the remaining people who decide not to get vaccinated simply won't have insurance, given they'll also be out of a job.

Instead of paying more into the system, they'll be paying less. They'll still end up in the hospital. Defaulting on the hospital bill doesn't seem unlikely for many in this situation.

This is the biggest reason why this move by Biden is an idiotic gambit, relying on the hope that most of the holdouts are simply on the fence and need a manipulative push. He may be right, but the cost of being wrong could quite literally be large swaths of the US Healthcare System.

What's more, we're seeing concerning numbers of healthcare workers leave the industry. ICUs are not, generally, overfilled because they're out of physical beds; they're overfilled because they're out of people. No one in power is talking about this. Hospitals lose nurses making $70k, then turn around and pay $8000/week for travel nurses. Those nurses that left? You guessed it: many are trying out travel nursing. The rest are burnt-out.

The crisis really is not in the unvaccinated; its in our healthcare system, and it was growing long before the pandemic. A fractionally small part of me actually believes what some in the really, really fringe-right are saying right now: the administration wants the healthcare system to fail, because its another crisis which can be pivoted into single-payer or even nationalized healthcare. Well, its their fear, but its conversely my hope, because at least that would mean the people in charge have a medium term strategy for what seems to be inevitable at this point.

A very large component of the "anti-vaxxer" crowd are medical staff who are now quitting in large numbers thanks to the mandate. Your beds are now going to be lowered.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/13/new-york-hos...

That sucks, but at least it's happening now and not with a disease that's even worse.

This is an important point. While the media love to paint all "anti-vaxxers" are rural republicans or Trump supports, this simply isn't true. There are many racial minority groups (African Americans in particular) who are vaccine hesitant. There are healthcare workers in both rural and big cities of both political parties who are hesitant on the vaccines.

Also the phrase "anti-vaxxers" is an intentional conflagration of two separate groups: the original pre-covid19 anti-vaxxers and anti-COVID19-vaxxers.

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