Suzanne Humphries on vaccines: what the evidence says · JRE #2294
SUBJECT: VACCINES
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
This is another part of the story, is that doctor's likely to lose $250,000 a year if they don't do that because there's incentive given to hospitals and doctors, which is what naively I was on the other end of when I woke up in 2008 and said, wait a minute, why are we doing this stuff to my sick, inflamed patients?
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Insurer vaccine incentives exist but are far smaller than $250,000 per year and are not structured as a penalty for failing to follow ACIP recommendations. PolitiFact rated as False the related viral claim that Blue Cross Blue Shield pays or docks physicians tens of thousands of dollars for hitting vaccination quotas, noting insurers stated that any performance incentives reward a broad set of evidence-based best practices, not vaccination alone. A peer-reviewed study of a Medicaid pay-for-performance program (Hudson Health Plan) found bonuses of about $100 to $200 per fully and timely immunized 2-year-old, representing a potential 15 to 25 percent increase above base reimbursement for care of children aged 0 to 2, with the whole program paying just over $1 million across four years and many practices. No documented incentive structure approaches a $250,000 annual loss per physician for not vaccinating, so the figure is unsupported and greatly overstated.