Government Vaccination Controversy

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Due to the rise of this controversy, the government wants to intervene in order to provide safety from this disease to all the American people. Even though the measles may be at bay for now, some fear for the future cases in which the disease may mutate into a stronger one. This panic has caused “State Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, recently proposed Senate Bill 277 to eliminate this exemption, which was created to allow people to opt out of vaccination for religious reasons” (Nordrum). However he withdrew his proposal after opponents had criticized that this bill could “force the state’s many unvaccinated children to either be immediately vaccinated or leave the public school system” (Nordrum). Not only has an attempt by a Senator has been …show more content…

For example, during the outbreak in 2008 where an intentionally unvaccinated 7-year-old boy returned from Switzerland with the virus, San Diego grappled with 11 additional cases, costing taxpayers $10,376 per case” (Haelle). This outbreak infected more than 800 exposed individuals, “including 48 children too young to be vaccinated who had to be quarantined at a family cost of $775 per child” (Haelle). Now if there happened to be an infant that was at risk of measles, instead of being vaccinated since they are so young, they would have to be quarantined, in which the costs would be higher now than back in 2008. According to health economist Adam Powell, president of Payer+Provider Syndicate Healthcare Consulting, he states that the cost of the measles “‘can be absorbed by many employees through the use of sick days, employees with lower incomes are the least likely to have sick leave’” (Haelle). This is due to the severity of measles as it can last for over a week in which causes workers to lose days of work resulting in the loss of money that they desperately need “the Affordable Care Act requires that the MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine be fully covered without patient cost sharing in its provisions requiring the coverage of preventive services (Haelle). Basically, the cost-benefit calculation in terms of money is a good deal as prevention of this disease would decrease the amount of money being lost due to the incompetency of those who deny vaccinations. The measles outbreak has caused a spur in the economic development of the United States as it proves that if amount of measles cases were to decline, the amount of money spent in treating those who refuse to be vaccinated would decline that can be used towards useful

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