The College Fix

Bill would require universities to cover students’ medical costs if they suffer vaccine-linked complications

Any of the 1,000-plus higher education institutions that “recklessly” required COVID-19 vaccinations could be forced to pay students’ medical costs if they suffered adverse effects under a new bill by U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale.

“Thousands of Americans were injured due to vaccines being forced out of the lab, into public circulation, then prematurely mandated,” Rosendale told The College Fix in an emailed statement Tuesday.

“My bill will not only make universities admit fault in recklessly forcing students to take the shot but will also make them financially responsible for the injuries they caused,” the Montana Republican said.

His bill, the University Forced Vaccination Student Injury Mitigation Act, introduced Oct. 31, mentions myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis, and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which have been linked to the vaccine.

Along with requiring higher education institutions to cover students’ medical bills if they suffered complications, the bill also would strip their federal funding if they refuse to comply, according to a news release.

Supporters of the legislation include a Johns Hopkins University medical professor and the advocacy group No College Mandates.

At the peak, more than 1,000 colleges and universities across the country required students to be vaccinated for COVID-19, No College Mandates co-founder Lucia Sinatra told The College Fix.

Her organization tracks and works to end COVID-19 vaccine mandates at higher education institutions.

“There is not one college or university that has yet to be held accountable for the countless injuries and deaths that have resulted from oppressive and coercive polices and Rep Rosendale’s new bill proposes to do just that,” Sinatra said in an email Monday.

Many universities coerced students into being vaccinated by telling them that doing so would “protect the community,” she said. In other cases, students quit, took gap years, or transferred to colleges that did not require the vaccine, she said.

“Within a few short months of the C19 vaccine mandate roll out, we began to receive emails about students injured and students that were previously healthy but had died suddenly after taking their shots,” she said.

Currently, 16 universities still require the vaccine for students who enroll or live on campus, Sinatra said.

These 16 colleges want to keep C19 vaccine mandates for students in perpetuity. Let’s see how long they can continue this nonsense under our new administration. pic.twitter.com/GHcGTJ18gj

— No College Mandates (@NCM4Ever) November 11, 2024

Rosendale (pictured) told The Fix he hopes his bill will prompt these universities to drop the unnecessary requirement.

“Mandates that are still in place today are no longer rooted in logical factual data, instead they are rooted in fearmongering and virtue-signaling,” he said.

“If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, or any profession that requires higher education to be successful, you shouldn’t have to subject yourself to taking a questionable injection in order to have a seat in the classroom,” Rosendale told The Fix.

Increasingly, mandatory vaccines, school closures, masks, and lockdowns in response to the 2020 coronavirus outbreak have been met with sharp criticism by prominent physicians and scientists.

Among them is Dr. Joseph Marine, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who supports Rosendale’s bill.

Marine described colleges’ vaccine mandates as “flawed” and ineffective in a statement through the congressman’s office, saying they did not keep campuses “safe.”

For the cardiologist, the situation also was personal.

“I had to make efforts to prevent my own high school and college age children from receiving COVID-19 booster shots that they did not want or need,” Marine stated. “It seems reasonable to me that institutions that implemented such policies without a sound medical or scientific rationale should take responsibility for any proven medical harm that they caused.”

MORE: Stanford doctor hailed as ‘intellectual freedom’ leader for challenging gov’t on COVID-19

IMAGE: Veron Art16/Shutterstock

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