This is a nice solution particularly with one payer health care nations.
“No Jab, No Pay” is the pointed name given to the Australian policy of withholding child benefits from parents who do not vaccinate their kids.
Since January 2016, recalcitrant or forgetful parents have taken a financial hit on their welfare payments – now $28 (all figures in Australian dollars) every two weeks (on a payment of $400). Parents can also lose their family tax benefit (worth $2,170 per child) and child-care rebate (worth up to $7,500).
In total, a family could lose up to $15,000 in support for failing to vaccinate.
In some Australian states, unvaccinated children are barred from child care, either permanently or during disease outbreaks, and daycare centres that admit them can face fines of up to $30,000.
When you know something is wrong on a freedom standpoint but there is something more important (like health/access to education) so you go end up agreeing.
I wonder how many anti-vaxxer parents operate on the logic of: "vaccinations are supposed to keep kids from getting sick but it makes them sick instead" because they don't understand the differences between a sickness or illness and a neurological disorder. They hear how vaccines work, it sounds like sorcery to made kids safe from being sick by exposing them to sickness when half their time is spent protecting their kids from germs so obviously it must be a scam intended to somehow hurt the children (because the fact that immune systems require pathogens to combat to stay effective against pathogens is confusing I guess? )
And to be fair, yes, natural selection says providing a hostile environment to an organism will potentially yield a new version to whom the environment isn't so hostile but that's why medical research is also being...as aggressive as the monetary interest and laws will allow.
Mullumbimby, in the Byron Bay shire, home of the anti-vaxers, had an epidemic of whooping cough. Only one in two were vaccinated. Babies too young to be vaccinated died as a result of coming into contact with others who should've had their vaccination. Those so ready to swallow the homeopathy fallacy are just as gullible as the religious. Let's be rational and stick to science based evidence.
@geist171 We love our children! But lets make them vulnerable in-case god sets a plague on us because health-care is blasphemy. Red spots after getting a shot is just the bodies immune system working.
This seems like a potentially responsible policy idea for a nation like Australia. Because a large percentage of their population is centered in smaller areas (overall population density 3.1 people per square kilometer in 2016) unvaccinated childen are a greater threat to a larger portion of the total population in the event of an outbreak. The whole 'giant island geographically isolated except for incoming and outgoing air or sea traffic' thing may be a factor here as well. I'm a little curious to know how Japan has/will handle this same issue.
Or the UK I suppose. I know we have a fair number of folks from the Isles on here.
How is/are the government(s) of the UK handling the vaccination issue?
This is sensible to me. Those who are not vaccinated and suffer as a result do harm to the rest.
Well, let me check were I am standing.... Nope, it is not australia. Let me check about single payer dealio... Nope, no single payer here. Okay, thank you for participating.