First, do no harm

Don’t sacrifice health care to politics

If you cut your nose off to spite your face and there’s no medical care available, who is left to stitch you up?

Or perhaps it’s more relevant in Arkansas to ask, if your state legislator is willing to cut off your nose to spite the federal government, who ends up paying a steep price?

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is the latest state institution caught up in the politicized debate over how the nation, and Arkansas in particular, attack the pandemic.

There really is no reasonable dispute within the medical community that covid-19 vaccines are at the core of the public health response necessary to quell the pandemic this nation and the entire world has faced since early 2020. But in the United States, we are a nation of people who routinely seek out medical care and then ignore the advice given by our doctors. Why should a pandemic be any different?

Vaccinations, the key to ending covid-19’s grip on this planet, have unfortunately become the battleground between political factions. It’s not a healthy place to be. And now, UAMS is caught squarely between the federal government’s push to contain the coronavirus and some Arkansas legislators’ short- sighted resistance in the name of notching a political victory at the expense of medical care for Arkansans.

Thankfully, a week ago, a panel of legislators put off any sort of decision that could have lasting and damaging effects on the state’s only academic health care system and the patients it cares for. But this dispute is far from over.

In mid-November, UAMS and another large state agency, the Department of Human Services, informed employees at their health care facilities that they must comply with a federal vaccine mandate. President Joe Biden in September announced a vaccination requirement for federal workers, employees of large companies and health care workers at facilities receiving funds from Medicaid and Medicare.

Chancellor Cam Patterson said the federal policy put UAMS, which has nearly 12,000 employees across the state, right between the proverbial rock and hard place. In other words, state policy and federal policy are in direct conflict.

Back in the spring when the Arkansas Legislature was in session and doing all it could to strip emergency powers away from the governor and anyone not them, lawmakers passed a bill that states receiving a covid-19 vaccine “shall not be a condition of education, employment, entry, or services from the state or a state agency or entity.”

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, however, has said it “will not hesitate to use its full enforcement authority to protect the health and safety of patients” at facilities that do comply with the federal vaccine requirement.

What does that mean to Arkansas and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences? Patterson has said his agency stands to lose $600 million a year in Medicare and Medicaid funding if its employees are not fully vaccinated or receive medical or religious exemptions by Jan. 4.

It is important to note that Patterson reported that around 82% of employees at UAMS, the state’s largest health care system, are already fully vaccinated. So the question really centers around the fate of 2,000 employees who have chosen not to be vaccinated so far. Lest anyone believes that recent good numbers in the fight against covid-19 means the state can disregard further protections, we suggest checking the front page of yesterday’s newspaper for the reason the word “omicron” is the latest entry into our pandemic dictionary. As has been feared, a new variant of covid-19 has arisen, apparently in Africa. Announcement after announcement Friday came of nations instituting new travel restrictions designed to keep the Omicron variant from hitching a ride with passengers coming from southern Africa.

Nations have already seen the impact the aggressive delta variant had on the spread and severity of cases. Concerning Omicron, the World Health Organization said Friday “preliminary evidence suggest an increased risk of re-infection with this variant” as compared to other variants. Medical researchers said data so far suggest the new variant has a high number of mutations in the coronavirus’ spike protein, which could intensify how easily it spreads among people. There is still much to be learned, but they said those mutations are “consistent with enhanced transmissibility.”

All along, medical professionals have been concerned having high numbers of unvaccinated people would give the coronavirus an upper hand. The more people who are infected by the coronavirus, the more opportunities it has to mutate into something stronger and more dangerous. No matter what reason an individual decides not to be vaccinated, the fact is they’re aiding and abetting this virus by creating an environment in which it has a stronger chance to become more of a threat to everyone.

But back to the situation facing officials with UAMS. The loss of federal funding would be a disaster for the health care of a lot of Arkansans.

That hasn’t stopped some state lawmakers from getting their dander up. State Sen. Bob Ballinger, for example, has threatened to withdraw state funding for UAMS if the agency doesn’t comply with the state law and ignore the federal mandate. He’s apparently willing to see his neighbors lose health care, one way or another, so that he and like-minded politicians can chalk up a win in the political fight over the coronavirus.

State Sen. Trent Garner of El Dorado even chose to use social media to refer to the leadership of UAMS as a “cancer” that needs to be cut out. Patterson and others get this kind of treatment just because they are trying to preserve hundreds of millions of dollars in funding that benefits the health care of Arkansans. It’s pretty awful to refer to any person as a “cancer,” but if it applies to anyone connected to these comments, we doubt it’s Patterson or any other leaders of UAMS.

The No. 1 goal of everyone should be to preserve the vital health care Arkansans need. Do the 2,000 UAMS employees not yet vaccinated deserve our concern? Absolutely. But the loss of federal funding will do harm to many more people across the state.

“First, do no harm,” seems it would be the best approach.