There may be hope on the horizon for Americans who have SIRVA and other vaccine related injuries from the Covid-19 vaccine. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, The Department of Health and Human Services will be meeting with representatives from pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and state health departments to discuss the Biden administrations plan to stop government payment for all Covid-19 vaccines. U.S. Plans to Shift Bill for Covid Shots and Treatments to Insurers, Patients – WSJ
Accordingly, this would privatize the sale and distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine making it similar to the flu vaccine. Vaccine manufacturers would be able to negotiate prices with insurance companies and pharmacies. Therefore, this would seem like a logical time to add the Covid-19 vaccine to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. If the vaccine manufacturers are going to be free to negotiate for the highest prices possible, they should be required to pay the seventy-five cent per dose excise tax that is paid on all other vaccines that are approved for children under twelve and part of the NVICP.
It would seem incredibly unjust to not add the Covid-19 vaccine to the NVICP if the manufacturers, distributors, and administrators are going to be allowed to negotiate about it in a free market. It seems inevitable that health insurance companies one way or another will pass the new cost on to the consumer. If it is not added to the NVICP, it will probably be the only LEGAL product sold in the United States where the manufacturers, distributors, and administers of the product are afforded all the luxuries of capitalism while the end consumer is given absolutely no recourse for injury sustained from said product. It just doesn’t seem right.
The inevitable question will be about what happens to people who have already been injured and the unsatisfactory answer is we have no idea. If precedent means anything, previous vaccines have provided a “look back” provision when they were added to the VICP so that people who had been injured by them previously could file a claim.
If you have any questions about this, SIRVA, another vaccine injury or anything else please feel free to contact me via e-mail at dan@sirvainjury.com or you can call/text me on my cell at 773.412.3320 and don’t forget to check out www.sirvainjury.com