As the new omicron coronavirus variant spreads and extends America's two-year pandemic misery, tempers are flaring and good judgment is waning among lawmakers. Case in point is a bill recently introduced by a Democrat in the Illinois Legislature, then quickly withdrawn, requiring vaccine-eligible people to pay their own health care expenses if they choose not to get vaccinated and subsequently are hospitalized with coronavirus symptoms.

Sure, it's cathartic. It's also bad public policy.

No doubt more such punitive bills will emerge soon, if not in Illinois, then elsewhere in the country. Democrats are reacting in part to counter Republican lawmakers floating their own truly awful legislation that would have the effect of extending the pandemic. One such Republican bill in Illinois would prohibit local school boards from imposing mask requirements. Another would prohibit state or local governments from requiring proof of vaccination.

Yet another would prohibit Illinois employers from requiring coronavirus vaccination as a condition of employment. At least that appears to be the intent of the bill. But the proposal inadvertently wouldn't actually cover coronavirus vaccines because it specifies that it applies to a "vaccine that was approved under emergency-use authorization." The major coronavirus vaccines have been fully and unconditionally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Bills that seek to punish companies for imposing pandemic precautions also are problematic because those operating in multiple states or that pay their employees' health care claims directly would be exempt from legislation that punishes employers for requiring pandemic precautions. Their benefit plans are governed under federal, not state, law. The result would be that the costs would apply only to smaller, in-state companies, which would be saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in medical expenses because one of their employees decided not to get vaccinated. The average cost of treating a hospitalized, unvaccinated coronavirus patient this year was $27,000.

The legislation to require vaccine refusers to cover their own medical expenses was a bad idea for a variety of reasons. For starters, it would discourage people who are really sick with a communicable disease from getting treatment. Every minute that they are sick and not hospitalized, they are spreading disease.

A lot of health care spending goes for conditions that could have been prevented if people followed their doctors' orders, such as Type 2 diabetes, unplanned pregnancies or smokers with cancer or lung disease. This bill might seem like an innovative way to punish people who irrationally refuse to get vaccinated, but it's equally irrational to impose measures that might discourage treatment when people become contagious.

Americans who refuse to get vaccinated are making a foolish decision. But bad judgment abounds in lots of other cases, often with hospitalization as a consequence.

Republican lawmakers are straining logic to shield vaccine and mask refusers from the consequences of their actions. Democrats shouldn't join such foolish games just to enforce accountability.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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