America Is on the Cusp of a Two-Tier Vaccine System Poor kids will be hardest hit by Robert F. Kennedy's anti-vax crusa

America Is on the Cusp of a Two-Tier Vaccine System

Poor kids will be hardest hit by Robert F. Kennedy's anti-vax crusade.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/09/acip-vaccine-for-kids-rfk-jr/684284/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us


By Nicholas Florko September 19, 2025

As far as sticker price goes, the recommended vaccines for kids in the United States do not come cheap. The hepatitis-B shot, given within the first hours of life, can be purchased for about $30. The rotavirus vaccine costs $102 to $147 a dose. A full course of the vaccine that protects against pneumonia and meningitis runs about $1,000.

Virtually all children receive these shots for free. The federal government legally requires most insurance to cover the roughly 30 different shots for kids, without a co-pay. Kids who are on Medicaid or who don’t have insurance coverage can get free shots as well, thanks to a CDC program known as Vaccines for Children. Among public-health experts, VFC, as it’s commonly known, is widely seen as an unmitigated success. After the program was created in 1994, “disease went down, and life was a lot simpler for the families,” Anne Schuchat, a former top CDC official, told me. Roughly half of American children are eligible to receive vaccines through VFC.

That ease and simplicity may be about to change. This week, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—which guides America’s vaccine policy—convened for just the second time since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the entire panel and appointed new members, some of whom lack vaccine expertise or have expressed anti-vaccine views (or both). The meeting was chaotic, contentious, and plagued by indecision. But the votes it got through are starting to point toward a shifting, more fractured landscape for kids’ access to vaccines................