Joined: Sat May 29, 2004 11:46 pm
Posts: 14428
Location: NC
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Doctors slash vaccines due to rising costs! Health care providers say insurers don't reimburse them enough for essential vaccinations, so they're not offering them.NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Parents who bring their kids to Dr. G. Andrew McIntosh for the chicken pox vaccine are out of luck.
The family physician, who has a solo practice in Uniontown, Ohio, doesn't offer that shot because he can't afford it. Most insurers won't sufficiently cover the cost.
"It doesn't do me any good. I am losing money on [them]," he said. The chicken pox vaccine runs about $115, but insurers only cover between $68 to $83 of that.
McIntosh has also cut back on a handful of other critical childhood vaccines for the same reason -- including the measles, mumps and rubella, known as the MMR vaccine.
It costs him about $58 to buy an MMR shot, he said, while insurers pay about about $40.
So McIntosh keeps a lot less of the MMR on hand. If a patient needs the shot and he doesn't have it, he sends them to a nearby public health clinic.
"I'm not happy to do that," he said. "The clinic is far, the service isn't great and my patients aren't happy to go there."
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