That is the hard economic lesson in the recent Supreme Court's vaccine mandate decisions.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin relates to a real pandemic–the bubonic plague–and ends in the Piper vengefully leading the children of Hamelin to their demise.

THE WAY THROUGH THE FOREST

Before analyzing the Court's decisions, the short story is that the Supreme Court split the baby.  First, it refused to allow the OSHA mandate to go forward.  This released over 80 million private employees from being coerced into submitting to experimental the drug treatment commonly referrred to as Covid "vaccines."  Second, the Court nevertheless allowed the CMS (the federal agency that pays Medicaid and Medicare bills) mandate to go forward.  This means 10 million private health care employees will potentiallly be coerced into shots or weekly tests.  For the employers who read and follow the recommendations in this piece, however, compliance will be relatively riskless and likely temporary.  Smart health care employers will comply with the law and at the same time will not do anything that could injure or harm their employees or someday subject themselves to a Nuremberg trial.

As with any crisis, there is great opportunity in this crisis for smart and prudent health care employers.  That is because the CMS "guidance" rules are out and three things are clear:  (1) CMS enforcers will not question, audit, or challenge any employee exemption request; (2) 100 percent "compliance" with the mandate will be much more about recordkeeping than coercion–employers who adopt and maintain a sound process for keeping track of the vaccination and exemption status of 100 percent of their employees will not be fined or punished; and (3) the major risk to employers, which will likely also be negligible, appears to be in maintaining compliance and recordkeeping with weekly testing.