At Least We Figured That Out
March 1st, 2007 at 8:26 am
One of the lingering questions about Perry and the HPV vaccine is why he decided on a mandate rather an a voluntary program. It seems like Perry could have saved himself from the uproar — although he insists he’s happy about all the attention — had he gone with a state-funded, opt-in plan similar to the one the governor of Massachussettes proposed this week.
Sure, some conservatives and more than a few whack jobs oppose the vaccine just because it could, in their imagination, make kids somehow more promiscuous. But within the legislature, it’s the mandate that’s got ‘em angry.
So why the mandate? According to the governor’s spokeswoman, Krista Moody, “The governor’s executive order was aimed as equipping as many women as possible with the ability to get this vaccine.” The data they looked at, she said, showed that a significantly greater number were likely to receive the vaccine when the policy was a mandate with an opt-out clause rather than a voluntary opt-in program. In general, mandatory vaccines have a roughly 95 percent adoption rate she said, versus a CDC prediction of 25 percent for voluntary vaccines.
Doug McBride with the Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed Moody’s numbers, but stressed that because the HPV vaccine is unique in the ages of women it treats and the kind of disease it treats, those numbers are just the best estimates of the agencies.
Moody and McBride both agreed that the mandate order made very little difference to the funding required for the vaccine — the federal dollars from the Texas Vaccines for Children Program, which would pay for the bulk of the vaccines not already covered by private insurance, would still be there whether the vaccine was mandated or optional. (The exact dollar figures are hard to pin down without a more specific proposal, McBride said.)
So, for now, that’s the official line from the governor’s office: The mandate was simply the best way to ensure that the vaccine reached the most young women.
