The Biden administration and health insurers incentivized doctors and health care providers with bonus payments and reimbursements – much of it taxpayer dollars – to vaccinate large percentages of their Medicaid patients with the COVID-19 shots. The federal government also used taxpayer dollars to reimburse providers for administering the shot to the uninsured at twice and, in some cases, nearly three times the usual dollar amount than it normally does for traditional vaccines.
Documents reveal that the federal health insurance program Medicare, California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), and the health insurance provider Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid in Kentucky incentivized health care providers with direct financial gain to promote and administer the COVID-19 shot, particularly to Medicaid beneficiaries in lower income and minority communities. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that helps people with limited income to cover medical costs.
According to California’s DHCS, $350 million in incentive payments was devoted to injecting the state’s 14 million Medicaid beneficiaries with the COVID shot from September 2021 to February 2022. Out of the $350 million, half came from federal taxpayer dollars and the other half came from California state taxpayers, the DHCS stated in a press release. Specifically, $200 million went to paying out financial rewards to health care providers who met certain performance marks raising the percentage of patients who had received the COVID-19 injection. To get paid under California’s incentive payment structure, which weighted young people 12 to 25, people ages 50 to 64 with chronic conditions, and minorities higher than other demographics, doctors needed to boost the vaccination rates of these specific groups by upwards of 75 percent to achieve the biggest payouts. The pay structure was unclear as to how much money doctors would actually receive.
As for Medicare, a program for people 65 years or older, the Biden administration is reimbursing health care providers significantly more to administer COVID-19 injections than it does for established vaccines. Notably, the government spent $2 billion when it bought 600 million COVID shots — enough to inject most of the U.S. population. Then it also funded the “American Rescue Plan Act” (ARPA) making the shot free for all Americans regardless of their health insurance status. Under the ARPA and the provider relief fund established by Congress, more emphasis and money has been put on the COVID shot than any other shot despite all the dangers.
For instance, before March 15, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reimbursed providers $28.93 for a single-dose vaccine, and $16.94 for the first dose in a series of two. On March 15, 2021, those rates increased specifically for the COVID-19 shots to $40 per dose, and for “in-home” administered doses the rate went as high as $75.50 on August 12, 2021, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration website.
In Kentucky, health insurance provider Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid used the same strategy to reach low-income and minority communities. According to the provider’s bulletin, Anthem told doctors they would “recognize your hard work by offering incentives for helping patients make the choice to become vaccinated.” The payments were incremental and included an initial and final payment based on injection dates. For patients injected before September 1, 2021, payments for doctors ranged from a $20 bonus per vaccinated person who injected 30 percent of their patients, to $125 per vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75 percent of their patients. A final incentive payment was paid to doctors for newly injecting people after September 1, 2021, at $100 per person who injected 30 percent of their patients, to $250 per vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75 percent of their patients. Since then, Anthem has changed the rate to a flat $50 per newly injected patient.
Anthem’s Incentive program also included guidance to health care providers in how to “soft start” conversations to convince hesitant patients to take the shot. The guidance cautioned doctors not to question a hesitant patient’s information sources, and implied those sources were not of “high quality” and that sources critical of the COVID-19 shot were “misinformation.” Rather, the guidance told doctors to downplay side effects, to advise patients the shot “prevents infection” and that it “is proven safe for all.”
Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, epidemiologist, and one of the most published cardiologists in America, with over 1,000 publications and 660 citations in the National Library of Medicine has publicly stated the COVID-19 mRNA injection is toxic, dangerous, and the cause of sudden cardiac death in many. In fact, when Dr. McCullough began speaking out in 2021, he called the mRNA injections of spike protein among the most toxic substance ever injected into a human being.
He stated, “There now are 200 papers showing that myocarditis (from the COVID vaccine spike protein) causes heart damage…If a healthy person suddenly dies, and there’s no antecedent disease, it’s the vaccine until proven otherwise.”
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat quote said, “Medical professionals are obligated to ‘do no harm,’ a key ethical rule in modern medicine. It is concerning to see doctors being financially compensated based on the vaccination rates of their patients. The COVID fiasco has caused many people to lose faith in hospitals and doctors. It will be a long time before that trust is restored, if indeed is even possible at this point. People have been injured and died as a result of the most expensive shot in history, and it was paid for with our taxpayer dollars. The entire medical system is in desperate need of reform.”
