Federal officials and insurance company executives have stated that U.S. health plan coverage for childhood vaccines will stay the same, even if the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services changes its vaccine recommendations.
Officials in 15 states are questioning that prediction in a new suit over HHS vaccine policy recommendation changes.
HHS recently moved seven vaccines, on what the plaintiffs call the “Kennedy schedule,” from the routine childhood vaccination category to a category for vaccines that a child might get after a parent or guardian engages in “shared clinical decisionmaking” with a doctor or other health care provider. The Kennedy schedule includes the vaccines against COVID-19, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, meningococcal disease, rotavirus and respiratory syncytial virus.
The Kennedy schedule is forcing cash-strapped states to spend money to counter increased resistance to vaccines and encourage children to get vaccines that protect them against potentially deadly, expensive-to-treat conditions, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The “defendants’ assurances that all vaccines on the Kennedy schedule will remain covered by private insurance companies as required by the Affordable Care Act are similarly open to suspicion,” the plaintiff states told the court.
The plaintiff states are asking the court to declare that the Kennedy schedule “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law” and to set aside the Kennedy schedule and any implementation of the Kennedy schedule.
The list of plaintiffs in the case, State of California Justice Departments v. Kennedy, includes Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, as well as California. The list also includes Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania.