Did Hungarian doctors accept "blood money" for every patient they vaccinated against COVID-19, even though they knew the jab was killing people? No, that's not true: The claim stems from a series of posts by U.S. antivax bloggers about a Kentucky health insurer's plan to incentivize COVID-19 vaccinations in 2021. There is no evidence any Hungarian doctor ever participated in the plan.
Moreover, Hungarian or European medical authorities have declared all six COVID-19 vaccines available in Hungary safe and effective for the general population.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) posted to TikTok on April 14, 2023, showing another post that had appeared earlier on Facebook. It read (translated by Lead Stories from Hungarian into English):
American doctors got a $125 reward, BLOOD MONEY, for every single vaccination against coronavirus. This same payment probably applied everywhere in the world. Now I understand why Hungarian doctors tried so hard to vaccinate everybody. Human life did not matter to them, just money.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Apr 25 13:54:28 2023 UTC)
The Facebook post's source of information is a Hungarian-language article titled, "The Price of Judas Doctors," published by antivax blogger Mária Magdolna Szőke on Substack on April 13, 2023. Szőke acknowledges that the vaccination-incentive scheme is specific to the U.S., but adds:
Let's not forget that, according to globalist principles, the playbook is the same all over the world, so it's not hard to realize that doctors in Hungary ... reaped a nice benefit if they injected as many of their patients as possible with the COVID poison that mendaciously passes itself off as a vaccine.
Szőke's blog post takes its cue from a chain of English-language antivax articles that began appearing on Substack on April 9, 2023. These posts criticize an incentive plan that the Kentucky branch of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, a health insurer, offered doctors in October 2021 to encourage vaccinations of Anthem clients against COVID-19. The plan, details of which are available on Anthem's website, offers doctors a bonus of as much as $250 per vaccinated Anthem policy holder, not $125 as the posts claim.
On April 13, 2023, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a vaccine-policy skeptic from Kentucky, amplified the antivaxxers' angst when he tweeted:
Your primary care provider was bribed to suggest you should take the COVID vaccine.
Monetary incentives are a common tool that insurers and governments use to encourage vaccinations as part of broader risk-management policies, both in the U.S. and Europe.
The Kentucky branch of Anthem is not registered as an insurer in Hungary and there is no evidence that it ever remunerated any Hungarian doctor for administering COVID-19 vaccinations.
Lead Stories asked the Hungarian National Public Health Center whether doctors received other cash incentives for Covid-19 vaccinations, and also contacted Anthem for reaction to Massie's accusation of bribery. We will update this story if they respond.
