[tcbawo]

When you say insurance isn't paying what it costs for a vaccination, what determines the cost of the procedure? Is it the vaccine itself? Office overhead? Liability insurance? I know pediatricians are generally overworked and underpaid. But, it seems we desperately need innovation on the cost side.

Maybe we need to drop kiosks into pharmacies that can read biometric markers, get doctor approval, and deliver vaccines.

[chimeracoder]

> When you say insurance isn't paying what it costs for a vaccination, what determines the cost of the procedure? Is it the vaccine itself?

The vaccine itself. Medicare and Medicaid are notorious for this, as they have no mandate to cover marginal costs of supplies (and they have the ability to force providers to accept less than that).

So, depending on the practice, those providers could very well be losing money on every Medicare patient they treat before they even have a chance to think about paying for their office space, paying their staff, etc.

[tclAmockingbird]

Yes, in my relative's case (being peds) it is Medicaid.

It's a really frustrating thing, as a physician you want to treat everyone, but accepting Medicare and Medicaid can really hurt the operation of your business.

[tcbawo]

Do you have any idea of the distribution of vacine prices between providers (ie hospital networks vs private practices)? Is there a large discrepancy, or do hospitals use this as a 'loss leader'?