The Problem with Upholding the HHS Vaccine Mandate
It's a dangerous precedent that federal dollars can hold you hostage, because federal dollars are everywhere.
Whether or not Thomas Jefferson ever said it, we know that Barry Goldwater did — and that’s good enough for me. The old adage rings true now more than ever: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”
Last Thursday, the nation's highest court split their ruling on two Biden administration vaccine mandates. While striking down enforcement of the OSHA mandate affecting large businesses, they upheld the order issued by the Department of Health and Human Services stating that healthcare workers in facilities that receive federal dollars must take the COVID-19 vaccine.
Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts were the two who swung to side with Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer in upholding the HHS mandate. This was done on the grounds that it was more targeted and less broad in scope than the OSHA mandate, and also that because these facilities receive federal dollars, the feds were allowed to tie that money to this requirement.
The danger in using federal dollars as a rationale for allowing such a mandate is that the federal government makes up 30% of our nation’s GDP, and virtually all healthcare facilities accept Medicare and Medicaid except for certain small family practices who have opted not to. Considering that according to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 1 in 3 Americans receives some kind of public coverage, it’s difficult and impractical not to. Many healthcare providers also enter the field of medicine specifically because they want to help those who need it most, such as the elderly and low-income patients who receive these benefits.
The healthcare industry isn’t the only place where the federal government has made it hard to exist without taking their money. Look at higher education. Much has already been written about how federal student aid is the primary driver behind the skyrocketing cost of college tuition. For brevity's sake I’ll not go into that here, but suffice it to say that 2/3 of students apply for federal financial aid using the Federal Application for Student Financial Aid (FAFSA). The skyrocketing cost of tuition has raised that figure substantially in recent years, making it a vicious cycle. Colleges raise tuition, knowing that federal programs will cover the cost. More students apply and are eligible. The cycle repeats.
Just like Medicare/Medicaid does to the healthcare industry, the ubiquitous nature of federal student aid makes it nearly impossible to operate a college that does not accept federal money. Some private, religious colleges do not wish to adhere to certain Justice Department requirements that would force them to admit students whose lifestyles are contrary to that of the values and teachings of the college. Few such colleges exist today because by not being able to accept prospective students’ federal aid, it becomes difficult for these colleges to compete for students, let alone hire qualified professors at a fair salary and provide a desirable campus experience.
A defender of federal student aid could at least argue that it’s only fair that public money be allowed only to benefit institutions that do not exclude or discriminate, and that the burden it imposes on a handful of private colleges is worth the trade-off. The alarming contradiction is that when it comes to this Supreme Court ruling on the HHS mandate, the very argument is that when federal dollars are tied to something, the government can impose exclusion and discrimination. The court's precedent isn’t just limited to denying employment to the unvaccinated when federal money is involved, either.
Going back to higher ed, at least one member of the court has already allowed services to be denied on the basis of vaccination status as well. Amy Coney Barrett, who ironically came down on the right side of the HHS issue, refused to even take up the case of Indiana University students who appealed the public university's decision to impose a vaccine requirement.
Even mainstream economists have long preached that federal subsidies and regulation in sectors such as healthcare and higher education bring devastating price hikes with it. This in and of itself should be reason enough to roll back Washington's involvement in these sectors, but if that’s not sufficient reasoning in your mind, then perhaps the strings that we now see so clearly attached to those dollars should give you pause. This is how social credit schemes like the one implemented by the Chinese Communist Party get their start. When government is either the provider of all services, or controls private providers through the threat of withholding their dollars, it’s easy to imagine the development of a two-tiered society where those who abide by the wishes of our beltway overlords have access to services that those of us who are less compliant do not. If a universal basic income were ever implemented, you can be certain it would be subject to social credit-like requirements. If not initially, then eventually.
We already hear the calls from authoritarian trolls on Twitter to ban the unvaccinated from receiving healthcare at all. While that seems a little far-fetched, it’s far less unthinkable that the government might start restricting the unvaccinated's access to Medicaid or docking the Social Security checks of unvaccinated Medicare recipients, using the argument that they create an inordinate burden on these already cash-strapped programs. Perhaps those arguments would even have a bit of truth to them. The question of who is allowed to go to college, or who's allowed to work in an industry that receives federal funding isn't a question of numbers, however, be they case numbers or dollar figures. This is a question of autonomy, privacy, and equality under the law.