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BumRushDaShow

(160,105 posts) Sun Aug 31, 2025, 02:14 PM Aug 31

RFK Jr says he'll 'fix' a vaccine program - by canceling compensation for people with vaccine injuries

Source: The Guardian

Sun 31 Aug 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 31 Aug 2025 08.31 EDT

While unrest and new vaccine restrictions have kept US health agencies in headlines, there’s one vaccine program in particular that Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently vowed to “fix”, which experts say could further upend the vaccine industry and prevent people experiencing rare side effects from vaccines from getting financial help.

While some changes to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which compensates people who suffer very rare side effects from vaccination, must come from Congress, Kennedy could take several actions to reshape or affect the program’s operations.

Kennedy “seems to be pursuing two opposite theories” on changing VICP, said Anna Kirkland, a professor at the University of Michigan and author of Vaccine Court. “Make it easier and compensate more, versus blow it all up. And then maybe there’s a third way of, foment skepticism, undercut recommendations,” she said.

The moves represent the latest battle in “the war on vaccines that he’s been waging for decades”, Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine said. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist for about two decades, has reported more than $2.4m in income for referring vaccine-related cases to a law firm, for instance. Making major changes to the program may open up vaccine makers to more litigation, making it difficult for them to keep existing vaccines on the market or to produce new ones.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/31/rfk-jr-vaccine-injury-compensation

5 replies

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Highlight:

RFK Jr says he'll 'fix' a vaccine program - by canceling compensation for people with vaccine injuries (Original Post) BumRushDaShow Aug 31 OP

F**k him. CaliforniaPeggy Aug 31 #1

If this turd comes out with a special vaccine for seniors I would avoid it like the plague it is! Hope22 Aug 31 #2

This will force the rare people with true vaccination injuries to sue vaccine makers NickB79 Aug 31 #3

This guy is a fucking lunatic nightmare. I wish someone would physically haul him out office. chowder66 Aug 31 #4

MaddowBlog-To circumvent RFK Jr. on vaccines, Democrats and blue states start getting creative LetMyPeopleVote Sep 4 #5

CaliforniaPeggy

(155,116 posts)

1. F**k him.

Reply to BumRushDaShow (Original post)

Sun Aug 31, 2025, 02:25 PM

Aug 31

Preferably with something sharp.

Hope22

(4,161 posts)

2. If this turd comes out with a special vaccine for seniors I would avoid it like the plague it is!

Reply to BumRushDaShow (Original post)

Sun Aug 31, 2025, 03:13 PM

Aug 31

I’ll wait for the kids version, thank you!

NickB79

(20,104 posts)

3. This will force the rare people with true vaccination injuries to sue vaccine makers

Reply to BumRushDaShow (Original post)

Sun Aug 31, 2025, 04:04 PM

Aug 31

And the threat of lawsuits and bad publicity will dissuade pharmaceutical companies from marketing them.

It's a backdoor approach to taking vaccines off the market.

chowder66

(11,260 posts)

4. This guy is a fucking lunatic nightmare. I wish someone would physically haul him out office.

Reply to BumRushDaShow (Original post)

Sun Aug 31, 2025, 08:13 PM

Aug 31

LetMyPeopleVote

(169,760 posts)

5. MaddowBlog-To circumvent RFK Jr. on vaccines, Democrats and blue states start getting creative

Reply to BumRushDaShow (Original post)

Thu Sep 4, 2025, 10:36 AM

Sep 4

Ideally, the United States wouldn’t have a patchwork public health system, but the Trump administration hasn’t left blue states with much of a choice.

The list of blue states (or at least states led by Dems) circumventing RFK Jr and Trump on vaccines and public health keeps growing:
- California
- Oregon
- Washington
- Massachusetts
- Illinois
- New Mexico
- Pennsylvania

This shouldn't be necessary, but here we are. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-09-04T13:02:43.631Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/circumvent-rfk-jr-vaccines-democrats-blue-states-start-getting-creativ-rcna229022

Ideally, the United States wouldn’t have a patchwork public health system, with different vaccine recommendations depending on where Americans live. But with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking a sledgehammer to the federal system, once-trusted public health departments reeling under politically imposed chaos and Republican-led states moving in radical and dangerous directions, the national system that has existed for decades without controversy has been rendered unsustainable.

And so, reality-based officials are having to get creative.

NBC News reported, for example, on three West Coast states forging a new public health alliance to provide “credible information” about vaccine safety to the public.

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced Wednesday that they were working to provide unified recommendations to ‘ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.’ The action comes after months of upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the firing of the agency’s director last week.

The Democratic governors — Washington’s Bob Ferguson, Oregon’s Tina Kotek and California’s Gavin Newsom — warned that the public would likely face “severe” consequences if the CDC becomes “a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science.”,,,,,,

What’s more, they’re not alone. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reported last week:

Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s health department in Illinois is currently exploring the possibility of purchasing Covid-19 vaccines in bulk straight from manufacturers in response to the mess in Washington, a senior Illinois health official confirms to me. Meanwhile, a coalition of mostly blue states led by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is planning to coordinate on the purchase and distribution of pediatric vaccines, should the federal government restrict access to them, according to a source familiar with ongoing discussions.

Indeed, The Boston Globe reported this week that Healey “essentially wrote a prescription for Covid shots for every person in the state over the age of 5, a move that would blunt potential federal restrictions on Covid boosters.”....

Dr. Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota vaccine expert who heads a project to help states and professional societies make science-based vaccine recommendations, told the Globe this week, “This is one of the most dangerous times that public health has faced in the last 50 years.”

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