The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a way for Americans to be paid for serious side effects from vaccines. A fight is brewing over how to fix a program created in the 1980s.
RFK Jr. Successfully Changes Hepatitis B Recommendations
The Vaccine Committee, led by Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resolved to discontinue the recommendation of hepatitis B vaccination for all newborn infants.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he will amend a federal program that pays benefits to people injured by vaccines, but vaccine advocates worry his changes could derail the plan.
The program has long been a target of the anti-vaccine movement, largely because it gives pharmaceutical companies legal immunity from medical side effects from vaccines.
Congress created the program in the 1980s as companies facing costly lawsuits were pulling out of vaccine production. They decided that instead of going to court, Americans should seek compensation for their injuries through specialized government programs.
Many supporters of “Make America Healthy Again” are vaccine skeptics, but others want the program to be abolished. Others would like to see changes as part of a broader push to link autism and vaccines, a key myth underlying MAHA.
“This was a Band-Aid program, and it was really deceptive,” said Mary Holland, president and CEO of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization opposed to mandatory vaccinations that Kennedy chaired for nearly a decade.
But self-proclaimed pro-vaccine officials say they don’t want to see Kennedy undermine the program. They say the country needs a strong way to make people whole in case the vaccine injures them. Without the program, fewer people will get vaccinated and more people will become radicalized, they say.
“If you want a strong, universal immunization program and strong uptake, you need a strong safety net,” said Renee Gentry, an attorney who represents injured people seeking payments through the program. “Our program could be that.”
Vaccine court is a ‘big deal’
Congress passed the creation of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, also known as a “vaccine court,” after several drug companies stopped producing the potentially deadly whooping cough vaccine in young children following lawsuits alleging brain injuries.
The new law protected manufacturers from being sued for injuries caused by vaccines. The government imposed a tax on companies of 75 cents per dose and put the money into a special fund that pays out to people who can prove the vaccine caused serious injury.
“This is a big deal,” said Richard Hughes, a lawyer and former pharmaceutical executive. “We need to make sure it remains a viable program, but we need to strengthen it. It really needs a lot of reform.”
Although Congress called for an easy process for Americans to settle vaccine claims within eight months, studies have found that people typically take more than five years to receive treatment for their injuries and usually need a lawyer.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services administers the program and maintains a list of specific vaccines and associated medical conditions that may qualify applicants for expedited payments. However, most vaccine injury claims do not meet the criteria, and some vaccines, such as the COVID-19 vaccine, do not appear on the table at all.
Some of the laws first passed in 1986 were never updated. The award for vaccine-related deaths is $250,000. shape It has never increased. There are eight people known as special masters who handle cases as de facto judges, but the backlog of cases has been increasing for decades.
Hughes and Gentry, attorneys familiar with the process, said the program is a better option than going to court. Hughes said drug companies can still go to court if they mislead or defraud the public.
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In a social media post in July, Kennedy said he was working with his staff and the Justice Department to “restore the Vaccine Court to the original intent of Congress.” An HHS spokesperson declined to provide further details.
He criticized the program as a “swamp of inefficiency, favoritism and outright corruption” and said government lawyers were struggling to avoid paying out large sums.
“The defendant is HHS, not the vaccine manufacturers, and the plaintiffs therefore face the enormous power and bottomless wealth of the U.S. government, represented by the Department of Justice,” he wrote.
As secretary of health, Kennedy has the authority to begin the process of adding new vaccines, medical conditions and symptoms to the injury table.
Gentry, an attorney who also runs the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at George Washington University, said the government’s inclusion on the vaccine injury table is a policy decision, not a scientific or medical one.
“The reality with vaccines is that there are no studies showing an increased risk of any symptoms with the vaccine, because if there were, the vaccine would be taken off the market,” Gentry said. “So that’s not our burden of proof.”
Melisha Dooley, a Mississippi woman who calls herself a MAHA mom, said advocates like her would like to see the program abolished. Her main problem is that pharmaceutical companies are not exposed to medical emergencies.
“It doesn’t encourage anyone to put people’s best interests first,” Dooley said.
Children’s Health Defense’s Mr Holland predicted a “blueprint” for reform would be released by the end of December..
Will RFK Jr. add autism as an injury?
Kennedy adviser Andrew Downing said in September that his team was looking at ways to ensure children with autism were covered under the program, according to Bloomberg News.
The decades-old idea that vaccines cause autism underpins much of Kennedy’s MAHA movement. The 1998 study that popularized this idea was retracted as fraudulent, and other scientific studies have consistently disproved this link.
Mr Holland said Mr Downing was “highly regarded” and said vaccines were the “leading cause of autism”. He said the program compensates people with severe autism under associated medical conditions, such as encephalopathy, a type of brain swelling, and seizure disorders.
Mr Gentry said children with severe autism were paid until the government paid for their encephalopathy treatment. revision Mid-1990s definition. When the parents of about 5,000 children sued in the early 2000s, alleging that vaccines caused autism, they lost, making it harder for future parents to win similar lawsuits.
Hughes said adding injuries “rooted in junk science” to the vaccination table could dry up demand for vaccines. tHe is an amount in the government coffers for other people in need.
Congress failed to make major changes
Congress needs to pass legislation that would make major changes to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and some Democratic and Republican lawmakers support reform. But their proposal has been pending in Congress for years.
Representatives Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, and Lloyd Smucker, a Republican from Pennsylvania, have introduced legislation in 2023 that would require the government to hire at least two additional special masters for the program.
The bill would increase the maximum death benefit to $600,000 and increase the amount annually based on inflation. Mr. Doggett’s companion bill would make it easier to tax new vaccines.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Doggett said he had a hard time getting Republicans to pass companion legislation at a time when criticism of coronavirus vaccines was at its height.
Holland, of Children’s Health Defense, criticized the tax because patients ultimately end up paying the tax.
“It’s a very difficult path to be someone who is a strong believer in vaccines, hoping to be reasonably compensated (if there are) people who want to deal with this whole vaccine compensation issue for basically promoting anti-vaccine views,” Doggett told USA TODAY in an interview.
He said he plans to reintroduce the bill soon during what he calls a “no-agenda session.”
“I’m not giving up, but I know it’s going to be an uphill climb,” he said.
