Doctor-insurer disputes force parents to pay up front for shots
Victoria Colliver
San Francisco Chronicle
It's the children who feel the sting of vaccinations, but it's their parents who can get stuck with a sharp bill for shots they thought their health insurance would cover.
Some pediatricians, faced with a growing number of recommended immunizations and rising prices, are starting to restrict or refuse to administer some vaccines unless patients pay in advance - and the prices can add up to hundreds of dollars.
East Bay Pediatrics Medical Group, for example, which has nine full-time physicians and offices in Berkeley and Orinda, informed its 1,800 Blue Shield of California patients that, as of Aug. 1, physicians would not administer four specific immunizations without payment up front.
They are Gardasil, the new vaccine that guards women and girls against cervical cancer by protecting them from human papillomavirus, or HPV; RotaTeq, which protects against severe diarrhea-causing rotavirus; Menactra, a new formulation of the meningococcal vaccine; and Prevnar, an immunization against pneumococcal disease.
"This is a business dispute, but the parents and kids are being squeezed in the middle of this," said Dr. Myles Abbott, a pediatrician with the group.
September 21, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Blog Reactions
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