Giving individuals who choose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine higher insurance premiums is one way payers could incentivize their members to get vaccinated, according to a Kaiser Health News op-ed.
In response to the statistic that 97 percent of patients hospitalized in July for COVID-19 were unvaccinated, the authors of "Analysis: Don't Want a Vaccine? Be Prepared to Pay More for Insurance" asked readers, "Why should patients be financially unharmed from what is now a preventable hospitalization, thanks to a vaccine that the government paid for and made available free of charge?"
Kaiser Health News Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal, MD, and Stanford (Calif.) Graduate School of Business lecturer Glenn Kramon argued that such a development is plausible given some payers already won't cover treatment necessitated by what they consider risky behavior, citing scuba diving and rock climbing as examples. The authors also mentioned that the ACA permits insurers to charge smokers up to 50 percent more for health plans than nonsmokers.
"The logic behind the policies is that the offenders' behavior can hurt others and costs society a lot of money," they wrote. "If a person decides not to get vaccinated and contracts a bad case of [COVID], they are not only exposing others in their workplace or neighborhoods; the tens or hundreds of thousands spent on their care could mean higher premiums for others as well in their insurance plans next year."
The authors noted that without full FDA approval for the vaccines, insurers so far have offered incentives, such as gift cards or a credit toward premiums, rather than penalties.