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Documents reveal that the federal government and insurers incentivized healthcare providers in Kentucky and California to vaccinate Medicaid patients against COVID-19 by offering bonuses based on the percentage of patients successfully vaccinated.
“[This is] truly sickening and I am embarrassed for my profession by this,” Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and biological warfare epidemiologist, wrote on her Substack, where she posted several documents relating to the COVID-19 vaccine provider incentive programs.
The documents help to draw a picture of the broader effort at the federal, state and local levels to unleash a range of strategies targeting low-income and people-of-color communities, which tended to have lower vaccination rates.
The strategies included providing hundreds of millions of dollars for the creation of “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and for training “trusted” and “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines to communities of color in every state.
Nass’ revelations showed these efforts went beyond advertising, fear campaigns, payments to patients and payments to trusted community actors and included, in some cases, direct financial incentives to healthcare providers.
Kentucky: Medicaid paid doctors up to $250 per vaccinated Medicaid patient
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid in Kentucky told physicians in 2021 it would “recognize your hard work by offering incentives for helping patients make the choice to become vaccinated.”
The more people vaccinated, the higher the per-person incentive.
For physicians who treated an Anthem Medicaid cohort with a minimum of 25 patients in their practice, Anthem Medicaid offered incentives for vaccination by Sept. 1, 2021, that ranged from a $20 bonus per vaccinated person for physicians who vaccinated 30% of the cohort, to $125 per vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75% of the cohort, with several incremental steps in between.
As time went on, the rates increased.
Between Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2021, physicians received payments ranging from $100 per newly vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 30% of their patient cohort, to $250 per newly vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75% of their patient cohort.
In 2022, the Anthem provider incentive program changed to a flat rate. Providers received $50 per newly vaccinated Medicaid patient. This included children ages 6 months to 4 years and kids 12 and older vaccinated between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, and children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated between June 1 and Dec. 31, 2022.
Medi-Cal: $350 million in incentives to vaccinate low-income children, people of color
The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) on Aug. 6, 2021, announced $350 million in incentive payments — $250 million to providers and $100 million for direct non-monetary payments, such as gift cards, to vaccine recipients — to encourage vaccination among Medi-Cal’s 14 million beneficiaries.
Of the $350 million, $175 million came from state general funds and $175 million from federal funding. The funding period lasted from Sept. 2, 2021, through Feb. 29, 2022.
The program offered incentives to managed care plans in the name of “health equity.” In the press release, DHCS Director Will Lightborne said that raising rates among Medi-Cal beneficiaries was essential because “California will only be safe when everyone is safe.”
Nass noted that this program was rolled out one day after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told CNN the vaccines don’t prevent virus transmission. “That’s clearly a contradiction,” Nass told The Defender.
The funding targeted Medicaid recipients with low vaccine uptake — the homebound, communities of color, youth ages 12 to 25 and people ages 50 to 64 with multiple chronic conditions — and incentivized outreach and vaccination activities for providers and pharmacies.
At the time of the announcement, only 45.6% of Medi-Cal beneficiaries age 12 and over had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to over 76% of Californians overall.
The DHCS funding included payments to community-based organizations, food banks, advocacy groups and faith-based organizations. This key strategy of funding grassroots leaders to act as “grassroots” proxies spreading the federal government’s vaccine message was widespread throughout the pandemic.
Providers could also couple this grant with a CAIRVaxGrant, which offered providers up to $10,000 to enter all of their historical electronic health record immunizations into the California Immunization Registry (CAIR).
The grant stipulated that after startup costs, payments would be directly tied to “meeting specific vaccination goals,” similar to the Kentucky program.
The incentive payment structure under the California plan was complex, paying a financial reward to healthcare providers who met particular benchmarks that varied by county and demographic but overall increased the percentage of vaccinated patients among their Medicare beneficiaries.
Under this incentive structure, providers had to meet particular vaccination targets in order to get paid. Those who were especially successful in increasing vaccination rates in the target groups would be entered into a “high performance pool,” receiving extra money for substantially moving the vaccination rates for Medicaid recipients 75% higher than baseline or within 10% of a given county’s general rate.
In the equation that determined the incentive payment structure, different demographic groups were weighted differently. For example, vaccine recipients ages 12 to 25 were weighted more highly than older recipients and those in the two racial/ethnic groups with the lowest uptake were also given greater weight.
By Jan. 21 of this year, despite this $250 million push, Medi-Cal vaccination had only increased to 52.9%.
Medicaid pays doctors more to administer COVID vaccines than other shots
As part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the Biden administration fully funded the COVID-19 vaccination program, making vaccines free regardless of health insurance status.
To cover the costs of the uninsured and underinsured, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) paid provider costs of vaccine administration through an Uninsured Program and a COVID-19 Coverage Assistance Fund.
Reimbursements were based on national Medicare rates, but the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which sets those rates, increased the reimbursement rate over time. Through March 14, 2021, HRSA paid $28.93 for a single-dose vaccine or for the second dose in a series of 2, and $16.94 for the first dose in a series of two.
On March 15, 2021, those rates increased to $40 per dose and $75.50 for an “in-home” dose of the vaccine.
Nass said the initial payments were in line with Medicaid payments for other vaccines, but the increased payment marked a departure from the usual reimbursement structure.
Usually, all CMS changes to Medicare payments for specific services must go through notice and comment rulemaking, but “to save time during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency bypassed that route before increasing payments for administering the vaccines,” JAMA reported.
CMS said the higher payments were meant to help expand COVID-19 vaccination, supporting “actions taken by providers, such as growing existing vaccination sites, conducting patient outreach and education, and hiring additional staff,” Healthcare Finance News reported.
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/doctors-bonus-payments-covid-vaccine-medicaid/
If they aren’t murderers, they are the closest thing to it.
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Too true, papasha408
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Have any of the “doctors” heard the following before? Apparently not …(This in not used in Sweden … My emphasis in bold.)
“I swear by Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.
To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the Healer’s oath, but to nobody else.
I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.
Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.
Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.”
Shortly put, their licence should immediately be revoked and they should be prosecuted due to violation of the Nuremberg treaty and related!
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Thanks for the information. I have never seen nor heard the Hippocratic Oath in its entirety before, although I have been through medical school in the US.
As I read Dr. B’s post above, I was struck, once again, at how convoluted the entire medical system has become. Doctors are no longer their own agents, and many are under pressure from a variety of absentee overlords to push treatments, like the Covid so-called “vaccines” on patients.
The above article notes that Medicaid patients in areas of “color” have been particularly targeted. These groups were covered by state-controlled programs, contracted out to private insurers. Anthem was mentioned.
Where, in this chain of supposed incentive, is the individual doctor free to deny what has been dictated from above?
Even individual doctors are rarely independent, as most work in group practices. The group gets whatever incentives are offered, so the individual doctor becomes a link in the control-and-manipulation chain.
Most people atill seem to believe doctors should have the freedom to use best medical judgment, but this is, unfortunately, constrained by practical reality.
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It seems that many of the doctors have been reduced to being assistants to industry sales representatives. I have some personal experience, but writing about it here would be like writing a short novel …
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Doctors are not free agents. They front for systems beyond their control. The blame game runs every whichaway, but doctors are on the front lines and have the most personal contact with patients. The drug, insurance and contract companies assume no risk if anything goes wrong.
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We didn’t take the Hippocratic Oath at our graduation, either. We were just given a highly ornamented copy. The reason I left medicine 13 years ago was because my employers told me I would no longer be allowed to use my best medical judgement with patients.
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Seriously, Stuart, this was told to you 13 years ago? Who told you? Something akin to Canada’s provinces college of physicians and surgeons?
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I was working at Taranaki Base Hospital in New Zealand and was told (by hospital management) that I was no longer allowed to admit teenagers who tried to hang themselves to hospital to keep them from killing themselves.
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Your employers didn’t allow? In this kind of profession, it sounds like a major misconduct [à la Mengele]. I [may] understand why you left, because sooner or later, it could have put you in a delicate situation. At least, your order was/is unprofessional …
As a possible result, how does the system normally work in NZ? Like in USA, where the doctors can be sued due to malpractice? Like in Sweden, where a medical review board may temporary suspend, revoke the licence or most often just say something in line with “Naughty! Shame on you!“? Anything different?
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Please, Sasjal, use a real criminal personality to describe misconduct. J.M. was a professional doctor who treated Typhus victims and caught the disease which incapacitated him for months. The stories about him are nonsense created by a special interest group for their propaganda purposes.
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Get updated and real! Mengele is widely known for once experimenting on people, especially twins and jews. It’s well documented by the Germans themselves at the time. As he managed to escape from the Nüremburg trials, doesn’t clear him from his gruesome crimes! Some good deeds do not excuse evil behaviour either. Defending him, one might get the impression that you are a radical socialist …
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Sorry, Sasjal, but no. There is no real evidence, J.M. experimented on anybody. And, please don’t bring up the corrupt and criminal Nuremberg so-called military tribunal which was nothing but a high-end lynching party. I have read all 42 transcripts of the tribunal and the so-called crimes are so ridiculous they could be presented in a Monty Python sketch. J.M. wasn’t even prosecuted after the war simply because he was a nobody German doctor in a work camp. It was well into the fifties that the B.S. hit a crescendo.
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He was “wasn’t” procecuted, simply because he managed to escape to the National Socialistic friendly part of South America before the trials, just like many associated did. Also, he was the main responsible for the “medical health care” in the camps. Please stop proving my last point!
Interesting that Socialists are trying to rewrite history in large scale about the World War II and since, only to benefit themselves …
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He didn’t move to South America until 1949, well after the show trials were in place. If you wish to believe the holocaust-hooey about homicidal gas chambers and factories of death, be my guest. That is a case of real rewritten history. Consider, there are no documents or documentary history of these supposed events, and, more importantly, there is no forensic evidence the gassings took place. All you have is hearsay, which isn’t evidence at all.
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Here in New Zealand, doctors don’t get sued for malpractice because patients with adverse outcomes due to malpractice are covered under a government program called Accident Compensation Corporation. If I failed to exercise due diligence in preventing a teenager from hanging themselves, my license would be revoked. Many doctors had their licenses suspended for speaking out publicly against the Pfizer Covid jab.
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The same crap took place in Canada. Many doctors were disciplined and lost their licenses for speaking out and prescribing Ivermectin and Plaquenil.
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