The Indiana State Department of Health was intending to bar county health departments from administering immunizations to children who were covered by health insurance. This was supposed to take effect on July 1, 2011. Instead, they changed their minds, for a number of reasons.
There are some immunizations that children are required to receive before they begin a new school year. In the past, it was common for parents in Indiana to take their children to county health clinics in order to get those shots. The clinics provided immunizations at a lower cost than what most doctor’s offices were charging for the same shot.
In June of 2011, the Indiana State Department of Health created a new policy that was intended to begin on July 1, 2011. From that point on, the county health clinics would be barred from administering vaccines to children who were covered by health insurance. The clinics would, however, be allowed to give the same immunizations to children who didn’t have any health insurance.
The basic purpose of this plan was to help ensure that there would be enough vaccines to go around, and that the vaccines would reach the children who came from families that couldn’t afford health insurance, (or who were underinsured). Doctors were told to stop referring insured families to the low-cost clinics for their child’s immunizations.
This new policy wasn’t pleasing to many families in Indiana. Many of them were relying on the clinics for the vaccines that their child needed for school this year. The new policy was something that parents were not given much notice about before it was supposed to take effect. This could have caused a financial burden to families that had budgeted for the immunizations from the low-cost clinics.
As a result, the policy was delayed. It did not start on July 1, 2011, as originally planned. Instead, low-cost clinics will be allowed to administer vaccinations to all children, whether or not they are covered by health insurance, until January 1, 2012.
The delay is designed to help local health departments with the “back-to-school” immunizations that children will be receiving this summer. The idea is to help ensure that children will be able to meet school entry requirements when school starts in August or September of 2011.
By next summer, however, the ban will be in place. This gives parents who have their children covered by health insurance time to save up some extra money for the doctor visits that next year’s school immunizations will cost them.
Image by Daniel Paquet on Flickr