MSNBC medical contributor Dr. Lipi Roy suggested Tuesday that unvaccinated Americans should be placed on a separate triage list and be eligible for certain kinds of care if they contracted COVID-19.
Roy joined host Joy Reid to discuss the impact of the most recent spike in infections all across the United States, primarily driven by the highly-infectious Omicron variant, and she seemed to stop just short of suggesting that those who chose to remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 should potentially be denied medical care altogether.
The conversation began with Reid, who said that the U.S. should consider fines or higher insurance premiums for the unvaccinated.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid proposes that unvaccinated Americans be paid less in the workplace (regardless of what their job is), face higher insurance premiums alongside groups like smokers, and pay higher medical costs if they ever get sick. pic.twitter.com/3DIPbGQjaR
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 12, 2022
“Let’s talk about what other countries are doing,” Reid began. “Because at some point, I feel like people who are willfully unvaccinated — fine, don’t get vaccinated — but they need to start to pay a little bit more of the cost of what this is doing to our system.”
“There are fines that are levied in places like Germany,” Reid continued. “Germany has stopped paying for the tests — the virus tests for people who choose to be unvaccinated. They’ve ended quarantine pay for those without vaccinations. IKEA, the company, is slashing sick pay for unvaccinated UK workers. If you are a smoker, insurance companies can charge you more, they can charge you a premium up to 50% and you have to put that on the form when you apply for insurance.”
“At some point, don’t we have to make people who are saying, ‘I’m willing to take the risk to be unvaccinated — take the risk for me and take the risk for everyone I come in contact with’ — shouldn’t they have to pay more into the system because they are collapsing our health system?” Reid asked. “They’re the ones in the ERs, they’re taking it up.”
Reid went on to claim that people having strokes or heart attacks were not being properly cared for because unvaccinated people were taking up the space in hospitals, asking once again, “Shouldn’t they have to pay more?”
Roy, who appeared on the show wearing a shirt emblazoned with the name “FAUCI,” responded by suggesting a separate triage list and care options for those who were not vaccinated.
MSNBC medical contributor Dr. Lipi Roy treads just shy of saying unvaccinated people should be denied medical care, arguing they could be put on a separate “triage list” that would result in them only getting “a certain type of care” though she’s “not giving up on” them yet. pic.twitter.com/f2sX7hlX1S
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 12, 2022
“So, there are many possible interventions that we could impose on the people who continue to choose to be unvaccinated,” Roy said. “Increasing insurance premiums, creating a list — a triage list so that when people come to the hospital maybe one of the first questions we ask is, ‘Are you vaccinated?’ And then that will direct them towards a certain type of care. Because we already do that. I can guarantee you, when a patient comes in with shortness of breath, like my dad — he got hospitalized three times in the past two years with shortness of breath but related to his congestive heart failure causing pulmonary edema — the first question they asked almost every time is, ‘Are you a smoker?'”
Roy went on to say that she was not “giving up” on those who had not yet been vaccinated, arguing that the way to get more people to come around was to impose more mandates.
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