The Biden administration is paying pediatricians to advise parents to subject their children to one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
In December, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it “is now requiring states to cover COVID-19 vaccine counseling visits in which healthcare providers talk to families about the importance of kids’ vaccination.”
The policy applies to all children covered by Medicaid. “Medicaid provides health insurance coverage to over 40% of all children in the United States and are [sic] a significant source of coverage for Black and brown children,” notes CMS, indicating by its use of a capital letter which children it considers more important.
According to a recent Washington Post report, the program could have been broader, covering vaccine counseling for patients on Medicare, too, but Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Xavier Becerra opposed the Medicare portion of the plan, arguing that it wasn’t needed because senior citizens already had a fairly high vaccination rate and because it could lead to fraud. Becerra’s lack of enthusiasm for even bigger government “incensed” “some White House and HHS officials,” who spoke to the Post for an article obviously aimed at getting rid of him.
Still, the Medicaid portion of the plan is bad enough. Children, after all, are at practically zero risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19, but they are at significant risk from the vaccines. There is absolutely no reason for doctors to be pushing them to get vaccinated.
At least there wasn’t until the Biden plan came along. In fact, doctors’ groups lobbied for the Medicaid reimbursements because they claimed their members couldn’t afford to take time to talk to parents about the vaccines.
Time reported in December:
Pediatricians remain the most trusted source of information for Covid-19 vaccines. Overall, 77% of parents said they trust their child’s pediatrician or health care provider a great deal or a fair amount, and that trust remained high across party, race and ethnicity. Providers know this and they want to use their power of persuasion on each family. But they often have limited time and are also trying to help patients catch up on medical care they missed during the pandemic, ask about any chronic disease issues or figure out why a patient is sick now, and ensure parents know about regular annual vaccines their children still need.
“You make an audible on the line of scrimmage every visit. If somebody has got a lot of genuine questions and the conversation is going well, you steal an extra three or four minutes for the conversation, and you take it out of the next visit,” [Dr. John] Waits[, CEO of Cahaba Medical Care in Alabama,] says. If a parent seems to really shut down, he might move on more quickly and revisit the issue another time.
The administration, of course, has its own objectives. Dr. Cameron Webb, senior advisor for equity on the White House COVID-19 Response Team, told the magazine that the Medicaid reimbursement program is “critical … to combating mis- and disinformation,” i.e., anything that contradicts the public-health establishment’s line on the vaccines. In addition, since many private insurers follow the government’s lead, they may well begin covering vaccine counseling, potentially getting even more kids jabbed.
How much cash doctors will actually get from Medicaid for vaccine counseling remains to be seen. Dr. Wendy Williams, chief medical officer for Coastal Family Health Center, a group of Mississippi clinics, told Time that “her clinics have been struggling to get reimbursed from the federal government for vaccinating uninsured patients throughout the pandemic. So far, she says they have been reimbursed for about 30-40% of those shots, which means the center has fronted the rest of the cost.”
One can only hope the same thing happens with reimbursements for vaccine counseling, and not just because they’re unconstitutional. If, as studies show, doctors tend to prescribe certain drugs in greater quantities — even when they’re not needed and can lead to overdoses — when they are getting gifts from those drugs’ manufacturers, are they not likely to recommend vaccines that could be more harmful than the disease they are intended to prevent if Uncle Sam is paying them to do so?
