Rise in Vaccine Costs Forces Doctors to Cut Back
GPs Offer Fewer Shots Thanks to Steep Prices for Childhood Vaccines
Aug 5, 2009
Vaccinations are supposed to have ushered in a bright new era of modern medicine and eliminated some of the worst infectious diseases in history. Now rising prices for the dozens of childhood vaccinations are making it difficult for doctors to stock all the vaccines they are told to give patients – and while most doctors are outraged, many parents and health care experts are relieved.
Vaccination Costs Force Doctors to Cut Back on Shots
The New York Times reported in 2007 that childhood vaccine costs had risen by a factor of three since 2001 alone. Where it used to cost the equivalent of $59 U.S. (adjusted for inflation) to dose a child with seven shots and four oral vaccines (the recommendations in 1980), today's vaccinations cost roughly $1,660 and include 40 different vaccinations, administered in several vaccine cocktails and 3 oral doses.
Not only are many families unable to pay for the required vaccines for their children, doctors' offices – most of which operate as small businesses – are losing money on those who have insurance coverage.
Doctors can charge whatever they'd like to people who pay for their own medical care up front. But where insurance comes into the picture, doctors are forced to accept what insurance offers for vaccines – and the amount is usually cost, or just below cost, when things like nurses' time and syringes are factored into the equation.
What's more, doctors lose money all the time on vaccines that go bad or vaccines that are wasted (e.g. remainder of the year's flu vaccine at the end of flu season, which will never be needed – but have been paid for out of pocket by the doctors' offices that stock them).
All of which has created a situation where doctors are, essentially, being asked to subsidize the vaccination of the general public. As a result, many general practitioners refuse to carry the newest and most expensive vaccines (such as Gardasil and RotaTeq) and 10 percent of doctors now say they are considering dropping vaccinations from the services they offer to children who are privately insured.
How Important are Childhood Vaccinations?
Two very different responses have come down from the medical community in response to the possibility of doctors no longer offering certain basic shots.
The first is outrage and concern from the pro-vaccine crowd. Those who believe that vaccine have brought "herd immunity" to the developed world – the elimination of deadly infectious diseases like measles, smallpox and polio because the majority of people are vaccinated – are panicking over the potential threat that lower vaccination rates might represent.
The anti-vaccine community, on the other hand, sees the response of doctors who refuse to offer vaccines at a loss as a healthy response to "big pharma" getting too greedy for its own good. Natural News writer Mike Adams writes, "…the big vaccination push… has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with corporate profits."
Alternative health professionals have argued against vaccines for many years, claiming that they cause or contribute to a host of autoimmune diseases, autism, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, and other vaccine side effects - and that most people would be better off without the shots. Now they say that fewer doctors offering vaccines will mean fewer instances of these illnesses and conditions.
The long term effects remain to be seen, but both schools of thought agree that the high cost of vaccines will have a very real impact on medicine and on public health.
Sources
- Adams, Mike, "Doctors Abandoning Vaccines That Don't Make Them Money," NaturalNews.com, 1 December 2008.
- Pollack, Andrew, "In Need of a Booster Shot; Rising Costs Make Doctors Balk at Giving Vaccines," NYTimes.com, 24 March, 2007.
- Stobbe, Mike, "Some Doctors May Give Up Vaccines Because of Cost," ABCNews.go.com, 1 December 2008.
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