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Bonkers pricing of "free" flu shots shows what's wrong with US healthcare
The annual flu shots that are free to those with health insurance are not immune from the convoluted and contemptible price-gouging that plague the US healthcare system.
Health insurance companies pay wildly different amounts for the same vaccines depending on how negotiations go with individual medical providers across the country. In some cases, providers have forced insurers to pay upward of three times the price they would pay to other providers, according to an investigation by Kaiser Health News.
The outlet noted that one Sacramento, California, doctors' office got an insurer to pay $85 for a flu shot that it offered to uninsured patients for $25.
Though $85 might seem like a trifling amount in the bloated scheme of the US healthcare system, such prices quickly add up as tens of millions of people receive a flu shot each year. And while the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover the full costs of all federally recommended vaccines, including the flu vaccine, any extra costs to insurers get passed on to patients through higher insurance premiums, economists told KHN.
Looking further at what insurers paid for flu vaccines, KHN found that costs spanned the whole range from $25 to $85. A doctor in Long Beach, California, got insurer Cigna to pay $47.53 for a shot, while a CVS in downtown Washington, DC, got $32 from Cigna for the same shot. A CVS just 10 miles away in Maryland got $40.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:20PM (3 children)
No, you will NOT "get the flu" by getting the vaccine. [cdc.gov]
The particles of influenza that are in the vaccine have been INACTIVATED. As in made not possible to replicate or be transmitted. You will NOT be "contagious". All that will happen is your body's active defense systems will train themselves to recognize the antigens of the strain delivered so that if you get that particular strain of flu the body begins its active defenses to kill it right away because it recognizes the pathogen.
If it "does not work" it has happened for three primary reasons:
1) You contracted one of the other hundreds (thousands?) of strains of flu the vaccine didn't cover. The vaccine only covers the four strains that researchers feel are the greatest threats in the coming season. You can read this [cdc.gov] to begin to get an idea how complex the subject becomes.
2) You ALREADY had the flu but it hadn't reached the stage of making you sick yet. (i.e. the vaccine was delivered too late).
3) You may have a very mild reaction to the shot. In a controlled placebo study it was found the same rates of mild symptoms occurred in those given sterile water injections and not the vaccine. I'm not sure about that (rough to take just one study), but I am sure that those mild symptoms are not the flu.
Again: YOU DO NOT GET LIVE INFLUENZA FROM A FLU VACCINE.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday November 22 2019, @12:21AM (2 children)
That's not what my doctor said.
And he specifically told me to stay away from immune challenged people for several days. I didn't notice any symptoms, which is what I expected, but I expect that I got an extremely weak case of the flu. (A short web search says that that is true only of the nasal flu vaccine, but I think I'll continue to trust my doctor over the web.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday November 22 2019, @12:52AM
Doctors are often very bad with pharmacological knowledge. Pharmacies spent a lot of time on the phone with doctors trying to rectify bad prescriptions. Eg. ear drops for ear infections prescribed for eye infections, double the dose needed of drugs that have side effects, drugs which in combination cause death.
Trusting your doctor when it comes to an area they are not experts in is a bad idea
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday November 22 2019, @04:07PM
You are correct that the nasal spray vaccine contains an attenuated live virus. However, it too CANNOT give you the flu [cdc.gov] - it doesn't have the ability to enter cells and replicate. There is exactly one recorded possible exception to this in the case of a toddler. One. (And any exception to this would be big medical news).
It's a smart idea to stay away from immunocompromised people if you may be sick. And it is routine advice to tell people to stay away from immunocompromised people if you are receiving any live attenuated vaccines (nasal flu, MMR, oral typhoid, yellow fever, herpes zoster, rotavirus, oral polio). From 2014 guidelines, only OPV is contraindicated to administer [aafp.org] to an immunocompetent person living in a home with an immunocompromised individual. But the only reason to do so after getting the vaccine is because you are not yet protected - it takes a week to two weeks for your body to respond fully to the vaccine. And again, if you already have the virus in your system getting the vaccine will not help.
But again, you did not get the flu from the flu vaccine. That you trust your Doctor, great! Wish more people did. Should you trust "the internet"? No. But will you trust:
Harvard Medical School [harvard.edu]
University of California San Francisco medical school [ucsfhealth.org]
Columbia University [columbia.edu]
Johns Hopkins medical school [hopkinsmedicine.org]
And, as before, CDC [cdc.gov]
Those aren't just "the internet." Those are the leading medical schools in the world telling you that you don't get the flu from the vaccine. And if you still don't want to believe that then there's not much else to be said. Hopefully others will read them and understand.
But, at the risk of being rated redundant: Again, the point of flu vaccines (as with most all vaccines) is not that your body begins multiplying the virus - the virus cannot multiply in the forms that are in vaccines, which is what "inactive" means. (One exception: Oral Polio Vaccine, a live attenuated vaccine and not inactive - it is known that a very small number of people do in fact develop polio from OPV in far fewer numbers than the live virus spreads. Which is why it is not used in the United States and the shot form of polio vaccine is inactivated). Instead, just the small amount of inactivated virus in the vaccine trains your body's active immune system to be prepared to fight the real live virus if it is encountered. Influenza mutates very quickly and there are multiple strains, which is why it is possible to get a flu vaccine and still actually get the flu later... just not from the vaccine.
But all that said, THANK YOU for getting vaccinated!
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