Not deny coverage, just administer a surcharge the same way they do for smokers. I’ve read that a Covid cases costs $50K on average, so quite justified. Delta, who is self-insured, is doing this. many other large companies are self-insured also.
With any luck a person who is getting hit by a $100 a week or more surcharge would swallow their pride and opt for a free vaccine.
I think this would be a situation in which vaccinated people may sometimes be treated first/better, etc. Would the doctors determine that a vaccinated person be most likely survive?
Again, how would the doctor’s know who has been vaccinated? I think this means that my fully vaccinated 85 year old mother would be triaged out if she had any serious health issue because who’s more likely to survive a heart attack than an 85 year old? Just about anyone younger is who.
I’m getting mad at hubs again, idiots like him are the ones driving this.
That seems like basic triage.
That said, a vaccinated person is more likely to survive than an unvaccinated one but a person may be in the hospital for weeks (literally) before it becomes clear if they will survive.
So, while it makes sense for those hospitals, not sure how they will manage it unless they kick people off of ventilators to make room for incoming patients and that would be…surprising.
I can prove I was vaccinated. I got vaccinated at a local pharmacy and, not only did I get that stupid paper card, they have me in their database and I can show it on their app (yeah, they have their own app). Indeed, their system automagically scheduled me for my second vaccination and sent me email reminders to show up (down to within 10 minute intervals).
I’d be shocked if those who were vaccinated were not put into a database somewhere when they signed-in to receive the vaccine.
This always makes me thankful I come from a place with a functional (but not perfect) health care system. If I go to a hospital or clinic or specialist anywhere in my province, they have access to my full electronic medical records including vaccination and prescriptions. This is a Good Thing.
So, I show up in an ambulance struggling to breathe. You are an ER doctor. Are you going to leave me in the waiting room while some overworked staff member looks up my vaccination status or are you going to start treating me now?
As it happens, I am fully vaccinated, but I die due to the delay in treatment because the overworked staff member is checking everyone’s vaccination status along with checking people in. How are you-the doctor-the person who is in the job to save lives-how are you going to feel about knowing that I died because of paperwork?
Any hospital will do its best to stabilize a critical patient.
I doubt any COVID patients show up at the hospital this way (dying on the spot).
OK, you are just ignoring reality because you like to pretend that most people are rational and shit. Stop being such a nice person because you are really wrong about this.
Covidiots don’t go to the hospital unless they are really sick because its just a bad flu and no big deal. I know this, I’m married to one.
“Really sick” is still far from dying.
Will hubs stay at home, gasping for breath for days, to avoid a hospital? Would you let that happen?
Quite frankly, there were a few days when I thought I was going to watch him die right there on his recliner. So, yes, I know that he will stay at home to prove that he’s right and I think I might have let it happen because he’s an adult and entitled to make his own decisions.
If he had stopped breathing or if he had asked me to call for help 911 would have been called. We live out in the sticks, it would have taken at least 45 minutes for him to have arrived at the ER after I called.
The vaccination rate here is under 50%, there are a whole bunch of idiots out here because its just the flu and tRump is being blackmailed into telling people to take the jab.
Gotta say…that’s really fucked-up (on the SO side).
Just IMHO…waiting for a mod smack.
NO MOD SMACK!!! NOT NEEDED!!!
You are 100% right. The attitude taken by Covidiots is all sorts of fucked up.
As to what I did when he was looking worse than after he had his quad bypass…I reminded myself that he’s an adult. I know that at that time he would have rather died than admit that COVID was more than a bad flu and I really had no right to intervene.
So, knowing that we agreed that we were done with kittens about 10 years ago AND knowing that we have never thought we should pay a breeder when we could get all the kittens we wanted for free. I paid $2600 for a kitten. We love our kitten.
When hubs brought Delta home, proving that he hadn’t learned, I put down a deposit on a $2800 kitten. Hubs realized that I would keep spending money on kittens unless he got jabbed, so he got vaccinated.
He didn’t do it because he was worried about dying of the flu, he did it because he didn’t want me to keep spending money on kittens when he could spend it on guns. I consider myself to be lucky that he gave in the same day I put the deposit down on the kitten. I got half the deposit back and think the 250 we lost was money well spent.
The fucking idiot.
From my understanding of the article, they’d be looking at the seriousness of the illness like they do in battle. If it doesn’t look good, they move on. Because vaccinated people do better, they’re going to be inadvertently be treating vaccinated people.
That said, a vaccinated person is more likely to survive than an unvaccinated one but a person may be in the hospital for weeks (literally) before it becomes clear if they will survive.
Yep.
I would humbly suggest just asking the person “are you vaccinated against COVID-19?” If they clearly state “no” or “I’m not sure”, then ask them “do you consent to be vaccinated right now?” If they do not consent, then they go to the end of the line. Everyone else gets normal priority, including those who are unable to respond.
Verbal self-reporting cannot reliably screen out all the unvaccinated, of course. And I concede there’s little if any benefit in vaccinating a possibly infected person. That’s not the point. The point is that this would provide a way to deprioritize explicit, defiant refusers without delaying treatment to anyone else.
We had some tension at home prior to vaccinations being available. I had decided that I did not want to be intubated, regardless of need. From there, my concern was being hospitalized and losing consciousness. Would my gf refuse consent for my intubation?
Because she refused to agree with my desire to not be intubated, I decided against seeking any medical attention if infected with COVID-19. Now that I’m fully vaccinated and am scheduled for my third later this week, there is much less concern.
This is never going to work.
If you look at the numbers, the older you are, the more likely you are to land in the hospital for Covid DESPITE being vaccinated. That is the unmistakable trend. It’s also unmistakable that the younger you are, the more likely you are to survive a hospital stay, an ICU stay. 30 somethings are three times more likely to avoid a hospital stay as 60 somethings. They’re 10 times more likely, once in the hospital, to avoid the ICU. And once in the ICU, they’re four times more likely to avoid death.
So, to punish the unvaccinated, you’re going to do an anti-triage, where, given a choice, you pick people less likely to survive (the elderly vaccinated) over people more likely to survive (the young unvaccinated.)
This is an important consideration. In some parts of the US today, if your 85-year-old mother is brought to an ER with a massive coronary, she won’t get timely treatment–not because of her age, but because the ER is crammed full of unvaccinated patients gasping for breath due to COVID. That’s the real issue here: who’s getting treatment NOW? The patient already being treated in the ER, possibly for hours because there are no ICU bed available and the overworked staff is busy calling other hospitals to try to find some, or the equally emergent patient being rushed in?
That’s essentially what happened to Daniel Wilkinson, noted in whack-a-mole’s post above. To reiterate, the Texas hospital couldn’t treat him and couldn’t find any hospitals with available ICU beds. Time ran out, and he died. I’m not a violent person, but I have a (fully-vaxxed) son with health issues, and if he desperately needed a hospital bed and none were available because they were occupied by the stubbornly, idiotically unvaccinated, I might just shove one of them out to shove him in. Call it Mother’s Triage. (And yes, I know it wouldn’t work, and I’d get arrested. Too bad. This is my son, and I’d be driven by desperation, not logic.)
When there are too few beds in an entire region and too many equally, desperately ill patients, which patients don’t get care and die? How would you decide? (Serious question.)
Cite, please, for your stats, one that applies specifically to COVID patients. Thanks.
Couple of thoughts on this:
- As you mentioned, the young unvaccinated are unlikely ever to reach the stage of advanced intervention.
- If people expect the hospital to rescue them from poor choices, this incentivizes them to make those poor choices.
- Natural COVID immunity is not known to be long-lasting. Why prioritize treatment of a person who’s more likely contract COVID again, infecting others in the process? It should be disqualifying, like being a smoker is disqualifying for a lung transplant.
- Let’s not forget, this isn’t just vaccinated COVID patients vs. unvaccinated. All of these people are taking up ICU beds needed by routine patients. I personally would go ballistic if my kid died of appendicitis because the ER was full of unvaxed covid patients. It’s fundamentally unjust.
People have the right to gamble with their lives after being advised not to. We can’t stop that. But I don’t see any reason whatsoever that we should rescue someone’s losing bet at the expense of someone who made the effort to be cautious and responsible.