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Leftist elites push proposal to punish unvaxxed with ‘fair share’ of higher taxes and insurance premiums

August 12, 2021 | | Print Article

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Left-wing elites in media and academia have begun calling for unvaccinated Americans to pay higher taxes and insurance premiums — and, worse, to be denied coverage for the costs of any COVID-related hospitalizations even if they pay for insurance.

Note that these demands are all coming from left-wingers who have accused Republicans of being “cruel” for being against Obamacare, a healthcare policy that forces the healthy and fit to subsidize the healthcare costs of the unhealthy and lazy.

The most recent plea comes from a “policy journalist” for Washington Monthly, a nonprofit magazine that purports “to tell the stories of how government really works —and how to make it work better.”

In a piece published Wednesday, so-called “journalist” Anne Kim called for forcing the unvaccinated to pay higher taxes and fees than everybody else.

“Does an unvaccinated high schooler want to play on the football team or participate in another high-contact sport like wrestling? Schools should double the activity fees for those students to cover the cost of expenses such as disinfection or medical expenses for teammates infected in an outbreak,” Kim wrote.

“Does a traveler want to fly unvaccinated? Airlines should add a ‘public safety fee’ along with the fees for checked baggage and extra legroom, with proceeds compensating flight attendants, airport staff, and other professionals for sick days and lost wages,” she added.

After listing a couple more proposed taxes and fees, she then falsely claimed that “none” of these “proposed penalties would fall disproportionately on low-income Americans.”

Fact-check: FALSE.

Data shows that vaccination rates are lowest among those with low income.

“More than half of unvaccinated Americans live in households that make less than $50,000 annually,” Axios confirmed last month.

Comparatively, Kim’s proposal is one of the less “cruel” ones.

In a piece published last week in MarketWatch, Texas A&M University professor Jonathan Meer — whose research interests reportedly include “altruism and philanthropy,” ironically enough — called for unvaccinated Americans who pay for private insurance to be denied coverage for COVID hospitalizations.

“Insurers, led by government programs, should declare that medically-able, eligible people who choose not to be vaccinated are responsible for the full financial cost of COVID-related hospitalizations, effective in six weeks,” Meer opined.

Some might say he was kind of copying a page from the Republican playbook. Republicans have for years made a similar argument in regard to those who willfully choose to be lazy, to not exercise, to eat unhealthily, etc.

Except that Republicans have never called for unhealthy people who pay for insurance to be denied coverage. They’ve asked only that the healthy not be forced to pay to subsidize the unhealthy’s premiums.

Regardless, the irony wasn’t lost on conservatives, who were quick to note that Meer had just unintentionally debunked the left-wing narrative that healthcare is a human right:

Last up is a piece published at the start of the month in The New York Times. In the piece, Kaiser Health News editor Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal and Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer Glenn Kramon called for raising premiums on the unvaccinated.

“Why should patients be kept financially unharmed from what is now a preventable hospitalization, thanks to a vaccine that the government paid for and made available for free? It is now in many drugstores, popping up at highway rest stops and bus stops and can be delivered and administered at home in parts of the country,” they wrote.

“A harsher society might impose tough penalties on people who refuse vaccinations and contract the virus. … [I]nsurers could try to do more, like penalizing the unvaccinated,” they added.

It’s notable how, again, the left is suddenly so interested in adopting arguably conservative ideas — albeit grossly twisted versions of them — now that it’s politically convenient.

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Vivek Saxena
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