As we are nearing 2020, it’s a fair question to check in on how close the nation is to reaching the targets set by Healthy People 2020. Perhaps the more important question is how these goals may be creating a discriminatory class system separating the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated in the workplace.
Many consider the workplace mandate for annual influenza vaccinations the most disturbing piece of the Healthy People 2020 agenda. The objective calls for mandatory flu shots as a condition of employment among 90% of health care workers.
In 2012, monumental federal actions prompted some movement toward that goal. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services implemented a final rule requiring hospitals to report vaccination rates, tying these rates to Medicare reimbursement. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Advisory Committee approved recommendations urging health care facilities to consider mandatory flu vaccination policies as a condition of employment.
Despite federal actions, many high-profile groups representing health care workers continue to be divided on flu vaccine mandates. The National Nurses Union, the largest nurses union in the country, for example, publicly oppose mandatory vaccinations for health care workers, while the American Nurses Association regularly speaks out in support.
But the division does not stop the bullying and humiliation tactics used nationwide to discriminate against health care workers declining to get influenza vaccine, a vaccine that for the past three flu seasons federal health officials admit has had an effectiveness rate of at best 47% to 62%.5 In addition, influenza vaccine-related injuries and deaths are the number one most compensated vaccine injury claim for adults in the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP).
