RFK Jr. Spars With Democrats Over Fraud, Vaccine Policy (1)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Thursday offered up his own answer for justifying cuts to the department, kicking off a marathon of appropriations hearings before Congress.

Kennedy told House lawmakers that the president’s budget, which proposes to slash the department by nearly $16 billion, “invests in prevention because preventing disease costs less and delivers better outcomes than treating it.”

During a series of tense exchanges, Kennedy faced off with several House Ways and Means Committee Democrats over the administration’s efforts to go after fraud and the health secretary’s changes to childhood vaccine schedules.

Kennedy tried to emphasize preventative medicines and focus less on vaccines, which the World Health Organization considers a key preventive measure for more than 30 life-threatening diseases.

Fights Over Fraud

Democrats grilled Kennedy over President Donald Trump’s pardoning of individuals found to defraud health programs and bringing back brokers suspected of committing fraud on the Affordable Care Act—a move they said apparently contradicts the administration’s efforts to root out what they say is fraud in social programs.

“It’s the people at the top that help to perpetuate this fraud and the administration’s position seems to be that it’s only the recipients and not the providers that commit fraud,” said committee ranking member Richard Neal (D-Mass.).

Kennedy said that concerns over fraud is a bipartisan issue, he doesn’t see Democrats as eager to do something about it. “The application, the implementation of anti-fraud has not been bipartisan,” he said.

The secretary pointed to waivers that allow states to send Medicaid payments to family members for caregiving services as “rife with fraud” because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services doesn’t have a way to oversee whether those services are being provided.

“It’s one of the reasons that Medicaid doubled during the Biden administration because we are paying for fraud now as much as for medicine,” Kennedy said.

In opening remarks, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) focused on preventive care, increasing access to health care in rural areas, and tackling health care fraud.

“Our health system is full of misaligned incentives, the most glaring being that reimbursement is concentrated to patients who are already sick and does too little to help Americans stay healthy,” Smith said.

Vaccine Policy

Democrats also pushed the health secretary on his efforts to change broadly accepted vaccine recommendations. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) pressed Kennedy on the recent uptick in US measles cases and what she says is a lack of a vaccine public messaging campaign.

“The anti-vaccine rhetoric you ran on and the anti-vaccine actions you have taken over the last year clearly correlates with the dramatic increases again in preventable diseases,” she said. “As a mother, this horrifies me.”

Neal also blasted the secretary’s impact on vaccine policies.

“Nothing has changed about the science of vaccines,” Neal said.

Kennedy is expected to testify before the House Appropriations Health subcommittee Thursday and in front of five more committees in the coming days.

Thursday’s hearing marks Kennedy’s first appearance before Congress since September.