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I gladly found the article on cnn.com by Rahul Parikh: Make anti-vaccine parents pay higher premiums. It it written by a physician who advocates making parents who are anti-vaccine pay higher insurance premiums.
The reasons he give are compelling. First of all, not vaccinating your children is not just a danger to the child, but to the larger community. It simply is not the case that only the direct people who don’t get the vaccine who will be put at risk of the disease. Children too young for the vaccine are in particular risk. Take, for example, the fact that Whooping Cough deaths are at the highest level in California since 1950! Second, the choices that parents who refuse vaccinations for their children directly lead to an increase in the cost of healthcare for the rest of society.
It makes me sad to hear the rationalizations that people give for not getting vaccines — they think they are being risk averse by not getting the vaccine. I’m sure there is some cognitive bias in people that makes it difficult to see how taking action is in any way less risky than not taking action… but I would bet that the majority of the parents who are opting out of vaccines have no idea what the risks are.
The last rationalization that I hear is some odd conspiracy theory about how every medical scientist who ever runs a study to find out whether vaccines are dangerous is in the pocket of a company who is paying them to fake or misrepresent the data. All of those scientists whose life work is to study what makes healthy… promoting things they know are unhealthy, for the money. That’d be pretty damn incredible.
Remember kids: get your shots!
Related articles
- Parents who won’t vaccinate their kids should pay higher insurance premiums (boingboing.net)
- Harris poll: Slightly More Than Half of Americans Say Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism (leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk)
Comments on this entry are closed.
Agh! This is ridiculous. So basically what you are saying is that you are going to strong arm people into vaccinating themselves and their children. This country is suppose to be based on individual freedoms. I find it funny in these modern days our Freedoms are slowly being plucked away, one by one. Doctors are suppose to be teachers not Dictators?
I have NEVER had the flu and I have NEVER had the flu vaccine and I never will. Not one of them OVERBLOWN commercials or OVERBLOWN Doctors will get me to inject my body with a vaccine. A vaccine that is not even full proof, one that is just a guess as to which strain will be running ramped? All of it is a big guess, really. Can you say Chemical Warfar.
Christy, there is hard evidence that vaccines work. There is also hard evidence that if people opt out of vaccines, they endanger everyone — not just themselves. Levying a higher insurance premiums on people who are demonstrably increasing future healthcare costs seems not only tolerable, but fair.
Why is it illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol? Because you put others in the general public at risk with such behavior. What's the difference in failing to get yourself/children vaccinated? I don't think there is a substantive difference.
If you have evidence for some kind of argument that you'd like to make against me, please present it. If all you have is emotive proclamations, reasonable people may feel justified in ignoring you.
This may be an obvious given… but the flu shot may not be the best example. If you're a healthy adult between the ages of 18 and 49 you're probably not going to get the flu whether you take the flu vaccine or not. That's why they say it's highly recommended if you're a child, elderly, or if you're in an at-risk condition. Otherwise, it doesn't do any harm. Not getting your child vaccinated for… Polio, diptheria, measles, rubella, tetanus.. – that's a whole other ball game.