ACTON – When Glen Cote of Acton drove to his appointment at CVS for the new COVID-19 vaccine, he was shocked to receive a text on his phone minutes before his appointment, letting him know that the vaccine would cost $190.99.

"Nightmare is the first word that comes to mind," he explained to WBZ-TV. Cote is covered by MassHealth, the state's program for Medicaid.

The new COVID-19 shot was approved by the FDA and CDC about a week ago, with the vaccine to be shipped to area pharmacies. Signs outside many CVS stores read "FREE FLU & COVID-19 vaccines here."

Instead, posts on social media show that several people nationwide are getting charged for the shot, anywhere between $125 and $190.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would be shocked if we see even a 10% vaccination rate by the end of the year. Most people who are still getting vaccinated are only doing it because it's free. Anyone who is relatively healthy is going roll the dice on covid hitting them like a cold instead of dropping a day's pay or more to maybe prevent it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Apparently there is a lot more interest in the vaccines this year than last, which is good. It's only just over half, but that's way better than last year.

Maybe a lot of people who skipped it last year got knocked down by covid over the past year and don't want a repeat?

The patchwork system of coverage and billing is pretty typically awful and lets people slip through the cracks, but that's just the US healthcare system working as designed.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

my pharmacy told me that insurance would cover it but because it only just got approved the insurances hadnt updated their systems

hopefully they are right, thats still extremely stupid but it should be fixed soon.

According to both CVS and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the new vaccines have a new billing code for insurances – which has not been updated in all insurance plans, leading to the erroneous charge for people seeking out a vaccine in this first week.

in the article for those of you who didnt read it.

also yes obviously it should be free for everyone and insurance shoudlnt be involved in case anyone wants to misread what im saying

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

joker-shopping

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but this is exactly why socialized medicine isn't just a good thing: but legitimately the only way to have anything even resembling a functional/healthy society.

I don't know what the number is but it's a fucking certainty that some number of people opted out of getting the first round of vaccines because they didn't believe them when they said "its free" and they were convinced they were gonna gonna get a bill that said "read the fine print next time, you owe 1000 dollars".

This shit is just going to convince them that their cynicism was well placed. It's fucking insanity and yet we cannot entertain any other alternative.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

damn, who could expected this with our stellar for profit healthcare

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I want to say again that Biden is demonstrably, measurably worse than Trump