Low-income kids told to wait for flu shot

[donsu]

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/25/loc_loc1ohflu.html

Some low-income children who qualify for flu shots may have to wait for their vaccinations because of questions over doctors being reimbursed through a Medicaid program.

Kent Ware, vaccine administrator for the Ohio Department of Health, recently sent doctors and health departments a letter saying they should not use privately purchased supplies for patients in a government program called Vaccine for Children.

Because of a national vaccine shortage, the state couldn't guarantee repayment or reimbursement through Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor, Ware's letter said.

Mary Kahn, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official, disputed the state and said doctors don't have to wait for their Vaccines for Children supply if they want to give a Medicaid patient a shot.
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catch this:

Medicaid patients can get their shot immediately if they sign a letter stating that they will pay for the vaccine, said Jon Allen of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.


isn't america's health care wonderful - are we boasting yet?

[aquart]

1. Why would a shortage interfere with payment?

What has one thing to do with the other?

[jackstraw45]

2. and HEALTHY members of Congress ALL had shots available - over 500

children could have been vaccinated.

Unf-ingbelievable.

:mad:

[MacDo]

3. I wish

as a Military member I could donate my Flu shot to someone who really needs it.

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

4. Just one more way to thin th herd of democratic voters

It would be nice if one's representation in government weren't proportional to one's income.

[zbdent]

5. Star Trek clairvoyancy

Remember the Voyager episode where there were two classes of people on this one planet that had hijacked the holographic Doctor.

The "working class" were dying from a disease which could be cured with one simple injection, anytime. If you were of the "working class", you were 99 percent unlikely to get the injection. "Scarcity", you know.

The "elite class" were being given weekly (daily?) injections for cosmetic reasons. No shortage there.

Sound familiar?

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Ditto in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic" game

[Palacsinta]

7. There's lots of Viagra!

However, to make plenty more kids, if we waste these ones. God....what has HAPPENED to this country!!!!!

[Laughing Mirror]

8. Poor kids develop a resistence to the perpetual short end of the stick

and it makes them sad, but it also makes them angry, as they look on their TV screens at a country of great wealth, health and promise, but not apparently for their poor little selves.

If this flu vaccine crisis, and other dramatic indicators such as the rise in infant mortality for the first time since 1958, are not loud cries out for universal health coverage in this rich country, I don't know what is.

[camero]

9. Basically, Ohio tells the poor to get lost

While the rich are in the front of the line through concierge medicine. Nice allocation of resources Ohio asshats.