Kennedy Going After ‘Broken’ Vaccine Injury Program

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he will target the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) in the latest effort to reform U.S. health policy.

“The 1986 Vaccine Act gave vaccine makers immunity against lawsuits by children who suffer vaccine injuries. The statute, and numerous subsequent court decisions, recognized that vaccines, like all medicines, are, in the words of the American Academy of Pediatrics case, ‘unavoidably unsafe,’ and that a percentage of vaccinated children will suffer injuries or death,” he wrote in an X statement, detailing his forthcoming action. “Congress, therefore, simultaneously created the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which obliged HHS to compensate injured children.”

Kennedy explained that while the Vaccine Court has “paid out $5.4 billion to 12,000 petitioners,” it “no longer functions to achieve its Congressional intent.” Instead, he wrote, the CVIP 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.”

The HHS Secretary further condemned the VCIP for “routinely [dismissing] meritorious cases outright or dragging them out for years.”

“The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it,” Kennedy declared. “I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals.” He emphasized that the Vaccine Court will be steered “back to its original Congressional intent” through his partnership with Attorney General Pam Bondi on the matter.

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