A former Democratic congressman has the idea of giving a shot in the arm to compliance with the COVID-19 vaccine, adding an additional $ 300 or $ 400 to the stimulus controls of vaccinated Americans.
John Delaney, the 2020 presidential candidate who represented the sixth district of Maryland Congress from 2013 to 2019, raised the idea of paying Americans to get a vaccine against COVID-19 sooner, after several polls that suggested that many people hesitate to receive one of the vaccine candidates.
So as the fourth emerging coronavirus relief bill was expected to pass, including direct payments of $ 600 to people the critics complained of, didn’t go far enough, Delaney resurfaced his idea of providing a financial incentive for inoculations suggesting that anyone who gets vaccinated gets a few hundred dollars in their stimulus control.
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Imagine if we did [second stimulus check] $ 900 or $ 1,000 and $ 600 went to everyone and $ 300 or $ 400 more they received when they got the vaccine.
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“Ideas like this should be incorporated,” Delaney told Yahoo Finance Live, “because it requires stimulus control, which is important, and it also creates an incentive for people to get vaccinated, which is incredibly important.”
In fact, many Americans have expressed concern that a $ 600 stimulus check (half the size of the typical check for the first stimulus package) will not be enough to help them come to an end as the pandemic continues into the winter and in many parts of the country. they have enacted blocking measures once again as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have risen to record levels since Thanksgiving.
The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization for two COVID-19 vaccines, one developed by Moderna Inc. MRNA,
and another from BioNTech BNTX,
and Pfizer PFE,
President-elect Joe Biden got his first dose of this vaccine on camera on Monday, assuring Americans there was “nothing to worry about” and urging them to get vaccinated.
And although there are now more Americans who say they will get a COVID-19 vaccine once it is available compared to surveys conducted in the fall, there is still concern that there will not be enough people who meet to reach the herd immunity. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 71% of respondents said they would definitely (41%) or probably (30%) get a COVID-19 vaccine if scientists considered it safe and available for free, and a survey was found. recent Axios / Ipsos report that 27% of Americans now say they plan to get a coronavirus vaccine as soon as it is available. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said that at least 75% to 85% of the country should be vaccinated to get herd immunity. .
Read:Now more Americans are saying they will get a COVID-19 vaccine once it is available
“Data or surveys suggest there are not enough Americans focused on getting the vaccine in the short term,” continued Delaney, a health finance executive. “So I think if we could create an incentive to … vaccinate 75% of the country sooner, that would end this COVID tragedy and allow us to return to normal more quickly.”
Former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has backed the idea of Delaney and Robert Litan, a Brookings Institution economist who served in the Clinton administration, released a report in August that suggested giving people $ 1,000 per vaccine. “If you paid $ 1,000 per person, so for a family of four you’re talking about $ 4,000. In these difficult times, it’s a lot of money and I think a lot of people would get the vaccine for $ 1,000,” he said.
But offering Americans a lot of immunity to the herd of 80% would cost the U.S. about $ 275 billion, something the chief economist at the Milken Institute, William Lee, noted in August that it accounts for half the cost of Medicaid spending, which reached $ 616 billion in 2019. money, ”he said.
A recent New York Times publication also warned that paying people to get the vaccine could offset: although so far the data suggest that Pfizer and Moderna vaccine candidates are safe and effective, paying people to get them could create mistrust people think COVID-19 vaccines are really risky.
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