Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is targeting a little-known but crucial program that underpins all childhood vaccinations.
Kennedy took to social media and the show of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this week to rail against the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and pledge significant changes.
“The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it,” he wrote on social platform X. “I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals.”
Attorneys and other experts say Kennedy is right that the program, which was created in 1986 in order to give quick payouts to families who can prove a child was injured from a vaccine, is badly in need of modernization.
“There’s a lot of low hanging fruit that [Kennedy] can act on that would immediately alter the course of the vaccine program for the better,” said David Carney, a vaccine injury attorney in Philadelphia and president of the Vaccine Injured Petitioners Bar Association.
Cases could be settled quicker, rather than going through a trial, Carney said. Kennedy could also press Congress to act on legislation that would increase the court staff, increase the pain and suffering caps, and add COVID-19 vaccines to the list of shots eligible for the program.
It has too few staff available to handle a massive caseload, leaving patients waiting for years just to have their cases heard. It covers almost three times as many vaccines as when it was first created, but the number of “special masters” who hear cases has stayed the same.
Attorneys who argue vaccine injuries said the government has been more favorable to vaccines than petitioners in recent years, fighting against claims that would have previously been easily settled.
“It’s not the fast, informal, petitioner-friendly program that Congress designed. It is very adversarial and litigious. That’s absolutely, 100% true,” said Renée Gentry, director of the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at George Washington University Law School.
But there’s fear the changes Kennedy wants will undermine the program, or tear it down entirely, risking driving drugmakers from the market and threatening access to childhood shots.
Kennedy has long targeted the VICP, and his X post echoed many of his previous arguments. He did not elaborate on what changes he is making but said he is working with Attorney General Pam Bondi.
He has previously said he wants to expand the program, making it easier for claimants to qualify for awards based on adverse events he claims are associated with vaccines but are not currently part of the program.
People can prove injuries two ways, said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert and law professor at UC San Francisco. Either you fit into the table of injuries, and then there’s a presumption that the vaccine caused the harm, or you have to show causation for an injury outside the list.
Kennedy has the power to add new injuries to the eligible list, like autism, which he has repeatedly linked to vaccines.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier in July, Kennedy also suggested vaccines are linked to numerous chronic ailments like diabetes and narcolepsy.
“We have now this epidemic of immune dysregulation in our country, and there’s no way to rule out vaccines as one of the key culprits,” Kennedy said.
In order to add an injury to the list, Kennedy would have to go through the federal government’s cumbersome notice-and-comment rulemaking process. Experts said it’s usually a time consuming and expensive undertaking, and often the scientific reviews don’t show enough evidence to prove if the vaccine caused harm or not.
Kennedy could also unofficially start settling cases for more injuries without adding them to the list.
Yet either change could risk bankrupting the program.
Families are paid through a trust fund that’s funded by an excise tax on vaccine makers, so there’s a finite pot of money available. The program’s fund covers lawyers’ fees and the costs, even for losing cases.
In exchange for the tax, vaccine makers have a limited liability shield. Petitioners file claims against the federal government, not the manufacturers, and families can get compensation without having to prove that drugmakers were negligent.
Kennedy has suggested he wants to change that.
“The VICP has devolved into a morass of inefficiency, favoritism, and outright corruption as government lawyers and the Special Masters who serve as Vaccine Court judges prioritize the solvency of the HHS Trust Fund, over their duty to compensate victims,” Kennedy wrote.
An HHS spokesman declined to say what, if any changes Kennedy is considering, saying the secretary’s comments speak for itself.
A popular anti-vaccine talking point is the desire to eliminate the vaccine makers’ limited liability shield. But that’s only something Congress can do.
Kennedy does have the power to drop vaccines from the program. Right now, it covers 16 routinely recommended immunizations for children or pregnant women. But if a shot is no longer routinely recommended, it can be removed.
In early June, Kennedy abruptly fired all members of the outside advisory group responsible for making vaccine recommendations. He appointed a new group of hand-picked replacements.
If that group no longer recommends the HPV vaccine, for instance, Kennedy can revise the injury table to remove it.
“If he takes it away, then those people have no right to be in this program, and they’re going to have to be stuck with civil litigation,” said Gentry, which is much more difficult and expensive.
