Doctors Received Bonus Payments to Administer COVID-19 Shots

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ORLANDO, FL – The Biden administration and health insurers incentivized doctors and health care providers with bonus payments and reimbursements – much of it taxpayer dollars – to vaccinate large percentages of their Medicaid patients with the COVID-19 shots. The federal government also used taxpayer dollars to reimburse providers for administering the shot to the uninsured at twice and, in some cases, nearly three times the usual dollar amount than it normally does for traditional vaccines.

Documents reveal that the federal health insurance program Medicare, California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), and the health insurance provider Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid in Kentucky incentivized health care providers with direct financial gain to promote and administer the COVID-19 shot, particularly to Medicaid beneficiaries in lower income and minority communities. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that helps people with limited income to cover medical costs.

According to California’s DHCS, $350 million in incentive payments was devoted to injecting the state’s 14 million Medicaid beneficiaries with the COVID shot from September 2021 to February 2022. Out of the $350 million, half came from federal taxpayer dollars and the other half came from California state taxpayers, the DHCS stated in a press release. Specifically, $200 million went to paying out financial rewards to health care providers who met certain performance marks raising the percentage of patients who had received the COVID-19 injection. To get paid under California’s incentive payment structure, which weighted young people 12 to 25, people ages 50 to 64 with chronic conditions, and minorities higher than other demographics, doctors needed to boost the vaccination rates of these specific groups by upwards of 75 percent to achieve the biggest payouts. The pay structure was unclear as to how much money doctors would actually receive.