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Comment by blurry | Hacker News Reader

There is an interesting proposal out there related to organ donation which could be adopted for this type of situation.

The proposal is to separate people into two groups: those who agree to donate their organs, and those who decline. Later on, when people happen to need organ transplants, they receive them according to their group priority, i.e. if you decline to donate, you turn comes up only after everyone in the first group received their organs.

I think that is a fair system, and could be applied in this case also. If you choose to vaccinate, you are covered, and if you do not, you pay out of pocket.

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Part of the problem with respect to applying this to vaccinations is that vaccines have a low but non-zero chance of failure.

If everyone gets vaccinated, and 1% fail (that's just an arbitrary number), it's no big deal because there isn't enough of a population to carry an outbreak.

But if 1% of vaccinated patients are vulnerable, and 5% of people choose not to get vaccinated, then now there's a potential for outbreak, and even some people who vaccinated get sick.

In economic terms, by not vaccinating you're introducing a negative externality into society that you're not paying for, so the true cost to non-vaccinators is artificially low.

I don't understand how this affects the system. If the vaccine fails and you need urgent care, you are covered because you did get vaccinated, right? What am I missing?

You're still covered, but you're paying a cost (missing work, being sick) and so is the insurance provider/govt, that you wouldn't otherwise have paid, and it's the non-vaccinator's fault, and they aren't paying for that damage under your system.

Not really a flaw in your system as much as just something interesting to think about.

> I think that is a fair system, and could be applied in this case also. If you choose to vaccinate, you are covered, and if you do not, you pay out of pocket.

Hold it. If you're going to deny them govt-paid healthcare, how do you justify taxing them to pay for govt-paid healthcare?

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