Singapore to start charging Covid patients who are ‘unvaccinated by choice’

GhostOfArielAdam said

GDSandy Photography said

Smokers were an example.  We could as easily talk about health issues as a result of too much alcohol or Mc Donalds.

I know it's just an example.

Alcohol is also highly taxed. Not McDonalds though. 

We should probably worry more about fossil fuels and the over $5T a year of environmental damager they cause globally

I do not understand how your example would translate into making people pay at the point of care for treatment resulting from bad life choices?

GhostOfArielAdam said

mph said

GDSandy Photography said

I don't think that charging the sick for poor choices is something we should start doing.  Where would that end?  Smokers with lung cancer or heart disease being invoiced?

Smokers already pay a huge premium on each pack of fags!

About £9 a pack is tax on the big brands. I don't think there are many 40-a-day types left. Most smokers I know are more like 10-a-day or less. Still about £1600 in tax a year.

I'm not even sure if smokers cost society more overall due to generally dying younger, and end-of-life care for a lot of non-smoking people is pretty expensive.

Out with a bang at 70, I say !!

Thing to do is take up smoking just before you retire.  Then your annuity rates rise exponentially.  Once you have the high rate pension you can give up again……not kidding!

Remember it's still experimental therapy, clinical trials will end in late 22' or even 23'...

While I'm as keen on getting everyone vaccinated as anyone, I think this is one aspect of Singapore's otherwise sensible approach that we can do without here. The principle behind the NHS is that we pay taxes so that healthcare is (mostly) free at the point of care. That means that the care is not dependent on the poor choices that might have contributed to needing it. It's very different to the sort of insurance-based approach they use in Singapore, where excesses and exclusions are part of the contract.

Nor, in spite of what I'm often accused of on these forums, am I in favour of compulsory vaccination.

I have ethical reasons for that - I think there needs to be a very, very good reason to over-ride the need for informed consent and I also can't see how it would be enforced. It's usually done by stripping refuseniks of certain benefits, which tends to make vulnerable people more vulnerable and ultimately more likely to end up needing heath or social services.

I also have practical reasons. Historically, mandatory vaccination for the general population tends to backfire. It's so unpopular, even among people who would have the vaccine if it wasn't compulsory, that it creates a general aversion to vaccines. Even people who comply with the compulsory vaccine start avoiding other vaccines and once there's enough anger, it becomes a party political issue which is something we've mercifully managed to avoid in Britain so far.

There's a very good historical analysis of compulsory vaccination here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X1831171X?via%3Dihub

Seems unfair to me and how is that not a form of co-ersion?

Okay, how do classify a vaccinated person?

Is it only after 14 days of receiving the third booster jab?

Do one jab people still count?

What about two?

Is it related to when you had the jabs?

And why do you have wait 14 day until after the jab to be classified?

What happens if you fall ill in that period of time.

At appears to be targeted attack on a section of people and absolutely nothing to do with health at all.

Those minority are also coincidentally the ones who are protesting and standing up to the reductions of freedoms and human rights.

Do you honestly think this about health?

'A jab in every arm'.

And then what?

We are all free again, huh??

Think again.

Edited by 3RDi

GDSandy Photography said

GhostOfArielAdam said

GDSandy Photography said

Smokers were an example.  We could as easily talk about health issues as a result of too much alcohol or Mc Donalds.

I know it's just an example.

Alcohol is also highly taxed. Not McDonalds though. 

We should probably worry more about fossil fuels and the over $5T a year of environmental damager they cause globally

I do not understand how your example would translate into making people pay at the point of care for treatment resulting from bad life choices?

Which one? Smoking and drinking, obviously they don't need to because they've paid a shed load of extra taxes to cover it.

I don't think we should deny or charge for health care for the unvaccinated, but I'd be happy for them to pay an additional healthcare tax. I don't know what it would be set at to cover the cost though.

3RDi said.

At appears to be targeted attack on a section of people and absolutely nothing to do with health at all.

 

If you think everything is an attack, yes, this, too, looks like an attack.

Lee River said

I'd be very uncomfortable with a move like that here in Britain. Among other things, I suspect the poor and under-educated may be over-represented among the vaccine hesitant, ...

There have been efforts, some by our enemies, to achieve that.

Singapore isn't exactly known for it's liberal attitudes. It was some 27 years ago but I had to change planes at Changi airport on my way to Indonesia. It was a long wait but I wasn't allowed out of the airport because my hair was too long. Instead I sat in the airport watching the Primeminister, Lee Kuan Yew, on tv berating single mothers who would get no assistance from the state. "If we do that we will end up like great Britain".

art65 said

Singapore isn't exactly known for it's liberal attitudes. It was some 27 years ago but I had to change planes at Changi airport on my way to Indonesia. It was a long wait but I wasn't allowed out of the airport because my hair was too long. Instead I sat in the airport watching the Primeminister, Lee Kuan Yew, on tv berating single mothers who would get no assistance from the state. "If we do that we will end up like great Britain".

I was there four years ago and as you say Singapore is not exactly liberal: its population is highly controlled: many CCTVs, fines for crossing the road at the wrong place, population classified into 9 social classes who are allocated into which areas to live, etc.  Having said that is it a very clean city without law and order issues and therefore being told to be vaccinated would not be seen as unusual by their population.