State Rep. Jonathan Carroll, an Illinois Democrat who claims the unvaccinated are "clogging up the healthcare system," has proposed a bill that would force them to pay all of their medical expenses out-of-pocket if they become hospitalized with the coronavirus.
The measure coincides with recent news that the average coronavirus hospitalization cost is about $24,000. This data is coming from the government-run Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
"The vaccine is proven to be the one thing that is stopping the severity of COVID-19, and we are seeing more variants popping up," said Carroll in a recent interview. "The experts are telling us, ‘This is now becoming a disease of the unvaccinated.’ The people that are choosing to get vaccinated are not the ones that are clogging up the healthcare system, it’s the ones that aren’t."
The proposed bill brought by Carroll states that "a person who is eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and chooses not to be vaccinated shall pay for health care expenses out-of-pocket if the person becomes hospitalized because of COVID-19 symptoms" — essentially removing the rights of insurance, medicaid and other services to ensure the welfare of patients infected with coronavirus.
If the bill is passed into law, the proposed changes wouldn’t affect Illinois residents for more than a year, in January 2023.
Though the bill will likely run into many legal challenges, Carroll recently told the Chicago Sun-Times that it is a "starting point — we’ll see where the conversations go."
Illinois State Sen. Dan McConchie, a Republican, has spoken out against the measure, and says he is not in support of taking away proper healthcare of Illinoians.
