Covid-19

[Texsahara]

Just wait until the insurance industry tosses the intentionally unvaccinated into their own risk pool.

Muh.
Freedumb.

Life insurance? Sure. Health? Nah. ACA does not allow that.

Circling back to this because there may be a loophole. The ACA allows for premium surcharges tied to a group medical plan to trigger something called a HIPAA wellness program rule which would allow an increased premium charged to unvaccinated employees provided it is not “coercive”. It sounds like it might be an increase to everyone and a discount to vaccinated employees? Not sure. The guidance has changed a few times and is a bit unclear. But it looks like Delta is going to give it a go so we shall see. It does not apply to individual plans, just group.

[RhodyYanksFan]

Circling back to this because there may be a loophole. The ACA allows for premium surcharges tied to a group medical plan to trigger something called a HIPAA wellness program rule which would allow a fee to be charged to unvaccinated employees provided it is not “coercive”. The guidance is a bit unclear but it looks like Delta is going to give it a go so we shall see. It does not apply to individual plans, just group.

Yup. Delta is saying all unvaccinated employees will have pay $200 more a month towards insurance.

[Texsahara]

Yup. Delta is saying all unvaccinated employees will have pay $200 more a month towards insurance.

Mandating vaccines makes more sense to me.

[Texsahara]

Good op-ed in support of free at-home covid tests.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...-counter-free/

[Texsahara]

Jonathan Lemire@JonLemire

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledges nearly 12,000 more COVID-19 fatalities in NY than publicized by Cuomo administration.

Tip of the iceberg I'm sure

[fredgmuggs]

We have to be vaccinated at my work by Sept 1. That's fine with me since I've been vaccinated since I was first eligible. But my workplace has made it convenient for non-vaccinated employees to get vaccinated by holding a vaccination clinic (they'll return in a few weeks for the second round). Funny thing though, the employees have to be vaccinated but the member do not have to be vaccinated (I work at a country club). It's mostly the wait staff and clubhouse personnel because all the maintenance staff have been vaccinated.

[RhodyYanksFan]

Mandating vaccines makes more sense to me.

Incentives....carrot....stick.... I'm guessing they're hoping this will push people to do so before they have to mandate it.

[Yankee Tripper]

Incentives....carrot....stick.... I'm guessing they're hoping this will push people to do so before they have to mandate it.

$1,200 a year seems like a pretty big incentive.

[RhodyYanksFan]

$1,200 a year seems like a pretty big incentive.

$2400 a year...just get the free shot..

[ClownPickle]

Good op-ed in support of free at-home covid tests.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...-counter-free/

As of April, you can get a seven-pack free at any pharmacy in the U.K.

...this is so basic. Why can't the Biden admin implement this? What are they doing?

[Texsahara]

Incentives....carrot....stick.... I'm guessing they're hoping this will push people to do so before they have to mandate it.

Enough with the carrot. Time for the stick.

[ClownPickle]

Rebuttal to NY Times article about destroying tests. I guess one could say, "Fake News!"

Since the onset of this pandemic, no company has made as many tests, as affordably, as Abbott. We have not destroyed any finished BinaxNOW product, nor have we destroyed any usable test components needed by the market that could have been donated. In fact, because Abbott maintained usable test components, we're now able to scale up.

In May, as vaccinations climbed and summer arrived, demand for testing plummeted, and public health guidelines told vaccinated people to refrain from testing unless they had symptoms. At that time, Abbott had significant amounts of finished test kits in inventory to supply expected demand. The lots of card components, shown in the photos in The New York Times article (143608R and 143467R), were at seven-month shelf life and were disposed of in accordance with our standard inventory management process.

And we chose to store individual components, many of which have been in short supply during the pandemic – such as reagent bottles, cardboard packaging, swabs, nitrocellulose strips, and even paper labeling – so that we could have them in the event that we needed to scale back up, which is exactly what's happening now.

https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/...s-article.html

[Yankee Tripper]

Enough with the carrot. Time for the stick.

I think United and Hawaiian Airlines have mandated for employees.

be interesting to see where those 2 airlines and delta are with percentage of employees vaccinated in 2 months. I don’t know what is any exception UA or HA made, just noticed in the Delta article that those 2 had mandated.

[Texsahara]

...this is so basic. Why can't the Biden admin implement this? What are they doing?

I think it would be good but I'm not as convinced it would be much of a game changer.

[ClownPickle]

I think it would be good but I'm not as convinced it would be much of a game changer.

I don't agree, and that's OK.